Dogwash

The last Government's national identity card scheme fell apart in the face of public opposition, spiralling costs and incompetence in implemenation.  It was killed off by the incoming Tory administration, probably more as a populist gesture than out of principled opposition.

So everything's hunky dory then.  The database state is dead.

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper, up to a point.  Certainly the prospect of being stopped and asked for "papers", at first by the police and then in short order by pretty well any petty official of the state, has for the time being at least receded.  We are for now spared the delicious irony of being apprehended for failure to show ID to a Nigerian traffic warden who is himself probably in the country on a long-expired tourist visa and working under a made-up NI number.

You can walk the streets unidentified and unlicensed alright, but it's an empty privilege as it's increasingly difficult to take part in the organized economy without some kind of approved ID.  I have no problem with the fact the some transactions require proof of identity, certainly those involving claiming benefits and services from the state or where proof of good faith and non-criminality is a sensible requirement.  Whatever, those can be argued case by case.

What does concern me is the narrowing of what counts as acceptable identification and the emergence of a system of de facto ID cards.  We are increasingly settling on two acceptable forms of identification to the exclusion of all alternatives: these are the driving licence and the passport.  These documents have two clear advantages for "suppliers".  Firstly, they are widespread.  Secondly, their serial numbers can easily be checked online.

So what's to worry about?  Well, not everybody has them.  Me, for instance.  And the tendency, in our increasingly systems- and procedure-driven world, is for there to be no flexibility to go outside the prescribed system.  If you don't have the de facto documentation, then you are a non-person and cannot receive services.

Let me give you a couple of anecdotes.

When I left my last employment, with the company I usually refer to as MegaCorp Inc, I found myself needing to provide and pay for my own mobile phone service.  Shocking!  So I toddled along to a well-known operator and eventually settled on a SIM-only monthly contract.  Credit card checks went through without problem.  And then I was asked for personal identification.  Passport or driving licence.  No alternatives accepted.  End of transaction.  I toddled a little further down the high street and bought myself a PAYG SIM in another (mainstream) phone shop.  No names, no pack drill.  At least in 2008 anyway.

In the event, PAYG served my needs well for the next four years.  I have recently moved to a contract with the second operator, and without all this ID bollocks.  So it was the operational whim of one company, but you can see the way things are going.

Another anecdote on a more trivial level.  As an old fogy in training, I am entitled to stuff like discount cards for national rail travel.  You pay something like £25 for the card and you get 33% off most national rail tickets.  I bought one of these in 2008 and as I did a fair amount of rail travel that year it costed in nicely.  On that occasion I filled in the form and turned up at a booking office and showed the clerk my birth certificate, a tatty paper document hand-written in 1948 in best copybook cursive.  No problem.  When the card expired National Rail emailed me to say I could now renew online and even get a three-year card at a significantly reduced price.  Great stuff.  But the three-year card was only available on-line and proof of age was only by entering a passport or driving licence number.

Fair enough.  I can still trot along to the station clutching my birth certificate to get a one-year card.  For now, anyway.  This exclusion hardly puts me in the position of a stateless refugee, does it?  But you can the way things are going.  For the operational and technological convenience of states and corporations, "rationalizations" are being made which drive customers in a particular direction.

There is no actual compulsion, but in reality it becomes progressively harder for the individual to function as a full citizen without acceding to the "rationalized" systems.  Consider an example.  Suppose, in 2008, government concerns about criminal use of mobile phones had led to a requirement to identify the purchasers of PAYG SIMs and that more-or-less all operators had chosen to implement identification through on-line checking of passport or driving licence numbers.  No mobile for me, then.  Is that a problem?  You don't have to have a phone.  Well, apart from the considerable personal inconvenience, yes it is.  I think you will find that many services these days require a personal telephone contact number as part of the sign-up process.  Bit tricky if you can't get a phone because you don't have a driving licence or passport.  Well, use your home landline.  Maybe, but before domestic internet access became a factor, I decided to relinquish my home landline and convert completely to mobile.  I don't think I'm alone in this trend.  Being uncontactable by phone may seem like a blessing.  In practice it's a crippling limitation for those outside the cash-in-hand economy.

All of this stuff can, for the time being, be worked round, at some personal inconvenience and restriction.  But the trend is clear, and the options are being squeezed out.

You may be wondering why a perfectly normal chap like me doesn't have these documents.  After all, doesn't everyone?

The driving licence is easy.  I don't have a driving licence because I don't drive.  There are a number of reasons why I don't drive, but the clincher is that my eyesight is at best marginal for the purpose.  Even with the prosthetic palliation of a pair of specs, my focus at middle and long distances is poor.  I don't know if they still do the reading a number plate at 25 yards thing: I might pass it by squinting and lucky guesswork.  So no driving for me.

As to passports, well I've had UK passports in the past and have travelled to foreign climes in the days of yore, but these days I have no business reasons to travel abroad and no strong inclination to enjoy put up with the glamourous experience of airports and aeroplanes — Greyhound buses of the air but with slightly less smelly and slightly less nutty fellow passengers — for elective personal travel, ta very much.  My last long-expired passport is in the drawer somewhere.  It predates machine-readables.

What prompts me to rant about this just now is that I'm currently negotiating with a respectable financial services company who want to sell me an investment package to apply my idle lucre.  All went well until the not entirely unreasonable question of identification arose.  Can you bring your passport or driving licence to our next meeting, please?  Don't have either, Cock, sorry.  Ah!  Stunned silence.  In the event, since they're after my money, I expect a perfectly sensible way round will be found.  That remains to be seen.  But you can see the way it's going, innit.

I am actively considering going through the expense and bother of renewing my passport.  Not because I have the remotest interest in calling upon foreign chappies to allow me to pass their borders without let or hindrance at her Britannic Majesty's Request and Requirement, but simply in order to function normally in British society.

NO2ID won, did they?  Hmm.