A plastic panacaea

Miss Eclectech and Mr Doghorse have yet another excellent animal video: a tribute to Charles Clarke, paragon of NuLab. (via Chris Lightfoot) Eclectech also has a site detailing communication with the local MP and the profoundly deaf Home Office.

It is the card that proves you have a national identity!
Indeed without one you'll a become practical nonentity

Lyrics (and music) by Mr Doghorse

I'm afraid that this time, I cannot put my vote where my mouth is, for I shortly won't be resident in the UK, and thus unable to put my name to either the NO2ID or equivalent Pledgebank petitions.

As it stands, two countries already have my fingerprints on record. My home country scanned my thumbprint when I was 12 and stuck it on an IC (which I had to bring to every school exam), and the US embassy has recently taken a scan of both my left and right index fingers (so I can enter their locked-down country). I didn't have much of a say in either. In the former, we were simply taken out of class one day when the IC van came calling, photographed and scanned. Heck, I even have a reference number (memorised) that uniquely identifies me along with my entire life history (almost failed Art, needs to improve chinese, will never succeed in later life). I'll bet when RFID technology becomes cheap and small enough, I'll be summoned home to be microchipped. Maybe someday, when I'm not so bitter and more rational, I'll post about the lack of liberties there, and how/why the population is happy for the status quo to remain ad infinitum.