I wonder what’s different about British politics that allows them to back down from a nationwide identity card scheme, yet we’re still larding on ever more useless bits of intrusive security theater.
Presumably, the next time there’s a terrorist attack in Britain, the media will play woulda-coulda-shoulda to show how an identity card could have stopped it. For some reason, the spectre of those kinds of recriminations didn’t stop the new coalition government, and I’d be interested in knowing why.
MikeBoyScout
The article doesn’t provide us any details for the change in policy beyond cost and civil liberty concerns, but the new British government is a bit more pro business than the last, and as intrusive as a national ID card may seem, not having a national ID sure makes it easier to hire and exploit people not in the proper immigration status.
Brian J
Aren’t most proposals for an national identity card here proposing something more like a driver’s license that looks similar for all 50 states? If so, perhaps it’s better to have that than spying on the phone calls and e-mails of people.
Regardless, in a more broad sense, I often wonder if it’s better to assume there will be some terrorist attacks and worry more about preventing them than tracking people, to the extent they are separate.
El Cid
If we could export our Southern and Western Republicans over there, we’d have a chance for a controlled experiment. For best reference, though, we should export them to one of the larger Australian deserts.
Cat Lady
I’d be curious to know if their political media consists of as big a bunch of access whoring Heathers as ours, and is there an English equivalent of Drudgico, other than News Corp, which pushes anti-immigration and soft on terror memes? Straight reporting and less right wing framing of the facts by the press would explain a lot. The Beeb reporters I listen to seem to ask tougher questions and then get out of the way, but what do I know.
WereBear
With domestic terrorism on the rise, the whole border/ID debate is simply stupid.
None of it does anything to ease my mind about people who have easy access to destructive tools, ideological grudges that are fanned white hot every afternoon, bone deep ignorance of how things really work, and and a stubborn arrogance that culminates in throwing their life away if they can take enemies with them.
And they were born here.
Catching the Hutaree was police work, I understand, and those people scare me even more than Middle East Terrorists. These were people who were willing to destroy their own communities, people they saw and interacted with every day, in an orgy of destruction and death.
That’s a lot more twisted than getting het up about a faceless enemy.
New Yorker
@El Cid:
I think that has something to do with it. The UK’s conservatives aren’t religious nuts pining for the days of the Confederacy. They’re probably more similar to old-school New England Republicans of 100 years ago. Far more paleo-con than neo-con or theo-con.
El Cid
High level analyst J. D. Hayworth is on with Dancin’ with the Roves David Gregory telling us that immigration reform = amnesty. Gregory’s characterization of attempting to deport ’12 million people’ is that ‘there’s never been the political will,’ as if there’s a lack of political will in designing a perpetual motion free energy generator. They’re both just s ridiculously impossible. Though it is a great way to advocate a complete garrison state. Rep. Luis Gutierrez seems to be talking about this planet, rather than imaginary flatworld.
El Cid
@New Yorker: In other words, British conservatives lack the necessary mix of anarcho-capitalism and BNP influences.
slightly_peeved
Most people at the BBC were probably taking the underground to work on 7/7/05. Like pretty much everyone else, they were probably taking the underground to work on 10/7/05. No beltway bubble for them.
Of course, the BBC still has actual journalists, which helps.
People have been trying to blow up London off and on for 70 years now. The city’s got pretty used to it.
JMC_in_the_ATL
Both the Tories and the Lib-Dems opposed the Nat ID as part of their respective platforms, and one of the more popular parts. Since they’re the coalition now, it only makes sense that it would be an easy early accomplishment for both halves of the coalition to be able to cite.
Ash
@slightly_peeved:
For now. The BBC has been slowly veering off the rails though.
PeakVT
I wonder what’s different about British politics
The campaign financing system and a lack of Civil War dead-enders.
El Cid
Hayworth now clarifies that the reason he turned toward ‘I’m going to fantasize we can shut down the border & throw the darkies out’ instead of a comprehensive solution is, of course, 9/11. The ‘scales fell from his eyes,’ presumably because God Giuliana spoke directly to him.
Emma
Cat Lady: I don’t think they are comparable. British papers have clear political biases and it’s a normal state of affairs. You are a liberal, you take the Guardian. You are respectably conservative, you read the Times. You’re mad conservative, it’s the Daily Mail. You are a communist, it’s the Morning Star.
I do think that there’s np deference from the press to the politicians. I remember watching a morning show interview and the interviewer saying to Sir High Muckamuck-whoever, ‘now that’snot quite true, isn’t it?’ andquoting a slew of data at him to prove his point. I nearly swallowed my tongue.
Cat Lady
@El Cid:
President McCain must have been counting his wife’s money at one of his other houses or he’d be sharing his pearls of wisdom about the danged fence. Arizona does bring teh stoopid.
Edmund in Tokyo
As Labour was in power during and after 9/11 and the British bombings, ID cards got proposed by the left rather than the right.
Since the left proposed it, the right wanted to attack it. And as the British media is mostly owned by right-wingers, being anti-ID cards currently gets a fairly easy ride with the media.
BTW, the Conservatives were for ID cards before they were against them, and Labour were against them before they were for them. Governments tend to like the idea after they’ve been in power for a while, and oppositions get mileage out of opposing them.
slightly_peeved
Watch the show “Mock the Week” on youtube. It’s where John Oliver got his start, and it’s the most vicious show to politicans I’ve ever seen anywhere.
El Cid
@Cat Lady: We should build a wall 1,000 feet high along all 2,000 miles of the border. And put flame-breathing 10 foot tall lizards behind them. And, uh, a billion tasers in front of it aimed at Mexico. This is my realistic plan. We have to enforce the laws.
El Cruzado
The fact that the British are used to terrorism (the IRA was blowing things up in London not so long ago) and that they got rid of most of it through the old fashioned ways (police work and negotiations. They also might have noticed that when they got unduly harsh about it it tended to backfire) means they manage to have a cooler head about it.
mrami
no military-industrial complex running the show? (can’t say for sure, but it seems reasonable)
Professor
@slightly_peeved: It’s more like 500 years, since the Reformation. The Catholics have been trying to bomb England to pieces. We have had Catholic terrorism for ages. Have you heard the name Guy Fawkes or the IRA?
That Other Mike
ID cards are distinctly unpopular as a concept in the UK, for various reasons; IIRC, the last time we had them was during WWII.
While the reasons given for getting shot of the idea are cost and civil liberties, the real underlying issue is that they are deeply resented as an idea by the general public; UK governments have never been shy about spending money or trampling on civil liberties if they think they can get away with it, but they do keep a weather eye on the next election.
Don’t get me wrong, I think there is an element of civil liberties protection and cost management in there, but it’s not likely to be the tipping point.
As to the coulda-woulda-shoulda show potential… Meh. The idea’s been going around the media for some time now that ID cards don’t represent an effective bulwark against terrorism of any stripe; the National Identity Register was resented as intrusive, too, and this wasn’t helped by quite a few high profile instances of govt personnel leaving sensitive documents/memory sticks on trains and in taxis.
@slightly_peeved: Yeah, pretty much. It’s not that the UK is blasé about terrorism, per se, it’s just that it’s more background noise at this point. As someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s knowing that every time I went anywhere urban I could get blown up by an IRA bomb, you get used to it after a while…
There’s a certain amount of bloody-mindedness in there, too – the British character, if such a thing exists, can be categorised as many things, but stubbornness is a huge factor, and we’re not about to get pushed around by a bunch of bomb throwing loons.
Secularism plays a huge part, too – institutional church aside, as a country we’re very secular, so less likely (IMO) to succumb to the Christian mania of OMG teh moozlums are coming to steal our precious bodily fluids that so characterises the terrorism issue in the States.
Gosh, that was a long comment.
El Cid
Tim Pawlenty assures us that any jobs rise under Obama is a “phony effect” because of deficit spending and the real danger is, of course, the inflation that is currently invisible and no one is predicting in any near term, and a mild inflation would of course be good for the private economy, outside right wing goldbug paranoids who see inflation when people have less money.
scav
@El Cid:
But is PR inside or outside of said flames? And then there’s that foreign sozializt kenyan outpost, HI — a.k.a. where the GOP holds conventions so we may have to put it to a vote of SC beauty queens.
mmm, just thought of the pressurized filth gushing out of the broken and twisted GoP. Whose in charge of the topkill on this one?
Joey Maloney
I guess I’ll try again, because it looks like WP eated my comment. Sorry if it shows up twice.
Because they have Cory Doctorow while we have Orson Scott Card.
(Plus I found a better link for Cory.)
bob h
Imagine that the BP oil spill occurred in the North Sea. Can you imagine the British people and press whining about the PM’s failure to show more emotion and be the Daddy?
Every Sunday I ask myself how our nation is going to survive the idiotified level of public discourse we have.
Ash
@bob h:
We survived politicians taking out their issues in sword fights and killing each other; we can survive this.
Uloborus
@bob h:
…no, but from what I’ve seen of British politics I can imagine the day-in, day-out round of journalists and opposition party members, on camera, making loud and angry demands about when the leak will be plugged. The fact that it won’t be plugged until August, we knew that from day one, and everything else is a desperate shot in the dark would be ignored there as well.
Starfish
@Ash: Having politicians take each other out in sword fights reduced the number of stupid politicians. The stupidity of current public discourse hurts the people who listen to it.
DavidJPostlethwait
Yes, but how do you
un-shit a bedun-shoot a Brazilian electrician?AhabTRuler
@Uloborus: Heh, I say we go all Admiral Byng on BP execs, pour encourager les autres.
Cain
@El Cruzado:
It’s why we suck at terrorism.. we don’t have an internal conflict where the protagonist is white! Of course, the British managed that without turning into a complete police state… here we’d just scrap the constitution and bedwet our way into a police state.
“U.S. Prevails!”
cain
Bill Murray
@Cain: I think we do have internal white terrorism, it’s just that they are similar enough to one of the major parties to not get recognized as terrorists
Chris
I’m here in the UK, and while the id card is viewed skeptically by a large portion of the population who view it as “unBritish” in many respects, the answer to your question is…
cold, hard cash.
The US has got the benefit of being a reserve currency/safe haven. British govt. is living in fear of the bond market right now, enacting 6bil of cuts in public spending in one go.
And this thing is widely viewed as an expensive boondogle that can be cut for 1.5 bil or something like that right off the top. Please the libertarians (and lib dems). Cut money, without cutting NHS/civil service/police/teacher jobs.
Brachiator
@Cain:
RE: The fact that the British are used to terrorism (the IRA was blowing things up in London not so long ago) and that they got rid of most of it through the old fashioned ways (police work and negotiations. They also might have noticed that when they got unduly harsh about it it tended to backfire) means they manage to have a cooler head about it.
There are a number of people in Northern Ireland who would vehemently disagree with you about that “no police state” thingy. And continuing Catholic/Protestant schisms easily prove that you don’t need race to keep conflict alive.
Those who think that the British response to terrorism has been measured and free of human rights abuses are being willfully blind to history, doubly so if you seriously believe that British intelligence services, as opposed to just the police, are involved in counter-terrorist activities.
And the degree to which the British authorities, and the British public, can behave remarkably like Americans can be seen in the whitewash and muted reaction to the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian mistaken for a terrorist in 2005, who was shot in the head seven times by the police.
It’s also unclear whether the “shoot to kill” policy has been seriously reviewed or changed.
The family ultimately reached an agreement in which they got a monetary settlement in exchange for agreeing not to pursue further legal action against the police.
That Other Mike
You are right – past actions by previous govts in relation to NI have in some respects been absolutely shameful — criminal, even. Whatever the circumstances surrounding the various periods of conflict arising from the Ulster situation, who started what and so on, the state is supposed to be a rational actor and live up to certain standards. Sadly, this has not always been the case.
However, I will point out that the Menezes incident did take place almost immediately following a bombing and one day after a failed bomb attempt; this does not excuse his shooting, but it might explain it a little better. Someone made a split second decision, and it turned out to be wrong.
That Other Mike
Damn. My portion of above comment starts at “You are right…”
mclaren
The difference is that Americans are cringing whimpering bully-worshipers who were born to be slaves. Americans kiss the police baton that’s beating them to death and lick the Department of Homeland Security boot that stamps into their faces.
The American people are craven cowards and authoritarian toadies who crawl eagerly on their bellies before anyone with a badge.
Brits don’t go in for that kind of behavior. A Brit has some minimum level of self-respect, whereas Americans live to kiss the ass of any uniformed mugger who barks an order at them.
SapphireCate
I am also in the UK right now – on a visa. All non-UK non-EU residents still need to carry one of these biometric ID cards. Only UK citizens (for whom it was never required) do not. The point was to make a uniform ID card with biometric info for people without a passport (all new british passports carry biometrics). The scheme is also relatively meaningless in terms of cost cutting as the cards are damn expensive and the fees paid back c. 90% of the costs. I think it’s only saving c. £86 million (from BBC tv news so i don’t have a link) which is a drop in the bucket.
All that being said, I highly resent the fact that the UK govt feels that a university employing me to teach lots of British undergrads means that they have the right to store biometric information about me without any guarantees as to how it might one day be used or shared.