Why? Because it is the single thing that will sway me.
I don't feel informed about specific "background" policies on any party; I actually don't think there is much between the blues and the reds or even the yellows, but on this issue - ID cards - I am clear. I don't want one.
I don't want my every single transaction monitored - which it will if we get the ID cards. ("Sorry sir, no ID card, no bank account'). I don't want to be on some kind of database in the hands of government where my travel is scrutinised. It makes me feel suffocated even at the thought of it.
The problems I specifically have are:
- The National Identity Register could be harvested by commercial interests - after all, local authorities already sell off electoral roll.
- Any change in my life or circumstance I am legally obliged to pass on to the NIR. Everything. All there, on a database, from cradle to grave.
- Exclusion: If I don't want to be on the NIR or have an ID card, then will I run the risk of not being able to claim the very things I've been contributing to all my working life: Pension? Health care?
Or will I be unable to get a mortgage? Restraints on travel?
According to Office of Public Sector Information, the NIR database will have 50 categories under which information on us can be collected, changed or added to without our concent.
And so, to answer your question, I'll be swayed on possibly one of the most important single-issues ever. Which means I won't be voting Labour.
Image credited to:www.no2id.net
:
" I suspect that the problems that we are facing now run much deeper than the question of whether we ought to consign another freedom - the freedom of who we privately are - to the dustbin of history. And I don't think that this particular issue is something which ought to have any bearing on the way in which we vote. I happen to think that voting is futile anyway. After all, as has been rightly pointed out, there isn't much to choose between. "
"I think the ID card is another example of us sleepwalking into another erosion of our freedom and a final embrace of the surveillance society which the UK has become. I say sleepwalking, because how many times have you heard people who are ambivalent [i.e. not given it much thought] about ID cards and CCTV cameras say: 'well if you've done nothing wrong, why be worried?' which misses the point completely and sums up the lazy thinking the vast majority of our population seems to think is the acceptable norm these days. As far as the general election goes, I won't be voting in this one [and didn't in the last]. There is simply no effective political group that stands apart for non-elitist interests these days- the Lib Dems occasionally put their head above the parapet, but don't seem to have the nerve to position themselves firmly in a place of their own on the political landscape. I have mixed emotions about not voting though; in some ways I am playing into the relentless, neo-liberal erosion of our society and it's inbuilt sense of individual, political empowerment- democracy is an irritant to unregulated capitalism and the sooner it is eradicated the better- and this is of course being achieved at a quickening pace judging by the falling election turnouts over the past ten years or so, and a reduced turnout is predicted for the next general election too. So am I and other non-voters something like the turkey looking forward to Christmas? I hope not,and it will be more a fact [soon] of political voting in-activity,translating into direct, political activity. "