This is the first of, maybe several, very occasional guest blogposts by me, a 21 year old (plus VAT) workhorse living in Continental Europe, with several sprogs living in Scotland and England as well as an ex-wife or two. I am too lazy to start my own blogspot and Subrosa has suggested I pin a few scribblings on her wall.
Let me declare from the very start, I am proud of my heritage. I claim the right to voice my opinions about my homeland; what is happening there, where it is going, right or wrong and who is doing what to whom. No one will take that away from me. Scotland is my land no more and no less that of anyone living there today.
Someone once said that we do not own our land for, we look after it for future generations; we are guardians. This I believe to be correct and equally so, our culture, our shared values belong to no group to extinguish to their benefit. We inherit it and it is our duty to pass the best of it on, as improved as possible.
Typically, as a Scot of my generation, I knew my father really only as a father. I was always his son and only after I married and we had our first child did he start to speak to me more as an equal. He had been through the War and had seen and done things that lay heavy with him. I have only recently begun understand that now and, with the benefit of the experience of years, him a little more.
We talked about his past, which he never had done. I do not know if he had done so with my Mother but she never said.
He was born in Plantation, Sunny Govan, in the hinterland of the Glasgow docks. The Red Clydesiders were no series historical He volunteered at 16 in 1939 for the VRAF by saying he was 17. He was too young he told me, to go to Spain. He contracted Black Water Fever in Africa and should have died. It never returned as he was told to expect.
At the end of the War he was not discharged, as he was a Volunteer and not a Conscript; he was retained. A duffed up eye exam ensured that he was not transferred to The Fleet Air Arm. An opportunity to transfer as an airframe engineer for Imperial Airways in Buenos Aires or The Caribbean was not something my Mother fancied so, it was John Brown’s and Clydebank.
I have developed a feeling over the years that he had a number of chances to progress himself but to do so would have meant uprooting his family. I know now for him that the creation of a stable home environment and the hope that I would have a better life than his was his guiding philosophy.
I have only ever once disagreed with my Father to a fundamental degree now as I look back on his life and mine. It is, that the day the house was knocked down in McLean Street, my Father left the family bible. Not that he was a religious man, nor am I, but within it was written the family history, its genealogy. He told me the past was gone it for us to write the future. At that time I did not disagree at the time. I believe now that it is only by understanding where we have been can we better focus on where we need to go.
I believe that the people of the United Kingdom have walked eyes wide shut into a Police State.
To understand how we got here, what it will mean to our future, we need to look back and learn.
I have copied this from a website www.privacyinternational.org
I acknowledge their original content and, as I am no hired hack, I feel no need to rework it so as to appear to be my original writing.
This organisation was started some twenty years ago as an international pressure group concerned with the erosion of personal privacy. It is not, I think, an anti New World Order Nutsite nor is it a Marxist sleeper organisation. It is an organisation which seeks to provide open information on the topic of privacy and has presented themselves to various House of Commons Committees. They seem to have a liaison with the American Civil Liberties Union. Anyway, I am not pushing them, just using what they have written on one topic, ID cards.
Article begins
History of ID Cards in the United Kingdom
During World War II, a national ID card was established to facilitate identification of aliens. Persons were required to carry the card at all times and show it on demand to police and members of the armed forces. In 1951, Acting Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard ruled that police demanding that individuals show their ID cards was unlawful because it was not relevant to the purposes for which the card was adopted. This ruling led the repealing of the National Registration Act and the end of the national ID card in the UK in 1952.
From that decision, LORD GODDARD, Willcock v. Muckle, 26 June 1951, that led to
Parliament's repeal of National ID card in 1952,
"It is obvious that the police now, as a matter of routine, demand the production of national registration indemnity cards whenever they stop or interrogate a motorist for whatever cause. Of course, if they are looking for a stolen car or have reason to believe that a particular motorist is engaged in committing a crime, that is one thing, but to demand a national registration identity card from all and sundry, for instance, from a lady who may leave her car outside a shop longer than she should, or some trivial matter of that sort, is wholly unreasonable. This Act was passed for security purposes, and not for the purposes for which, apparently, it is now sought to be used. To use Acts of Parliament, passed for particular purposes during war, in times when the war is past, except that technically a state of war exists, tends to turn law-abiding subjects into lawbreakers, which is a most undesirable state of affairs. Further, in this country we have always prided ourselves on the good feeling that exists between the police and the public and such action tends to make the people resentful of the acts of the police and inclines them to obstruct the police instead of to assist them ...
They ought not to use a Security Act, which was passed for a particular purpose, as they have done in this case. For these reasons, although the court dismisses the appeal, it gives no costs against the appellant."
Since that time, there have been numerous attempts by the government to reintroduce the card. The purposes for the card have varied, from tax administration, immigration, and drivers licenses to football hooliganism. For instance, in 1989 there was a debate in the Commons on a bill.
In 1995, when Prime Minister John Major issued a consultation paper, there was considerable public and Cabinet opposition. The proposal was quietly set aside in 1996.
Identity Cards - A Consultation 1995 Home Office press release on id cards, 24 January 1996 claiming majority of people in favour of cards. Not very accurate. House of Lords, National Identity Number Implications, 23rd July 1996. Charter 88, Mistaken Identity! Member briefing on National ID Card. Identity Cards and the Slow Death of Parliamentary Government, Caroline Ellis, Charter 88, Violations of Rights in Britain Series 3 No.29 Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency report, Smart cards: Opportunities for public sector applications.
Response of the Data Protection Registrar to the Government's proposals for Identity Cards.
The Green Paper on Identity Cards: A response from the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility by Simon Rogerson.
The Scottish Liberal Dems party congress statement:
"The Conference views with concern the Government's renewed interest in the introduction of national identity cards. Conference condemns national ID cards as open to abuse and leading to potential infringement of personal and civil rights."
Article ends
The links don't appear to work so here's the URL http://tinyurl.com/cm8ks3
So, what was that all about?
Was it about my father or ID cards?
It was about both and in my Father I see a metaphor for complete generation who surrendered no small part of their lives, some of them all of it, and some of their freedoms so that we could keep ours.
Lord Goddard was a wise judge and would that he were here, today, to aid us against this bunch of crooks in politicians’ clothing. He gave us back one freedom that they wanted to steal away.
As apples are apples, so will the Police abuse the powers they are given. If we haven’t learned that from our common history we have learned nothing and deserve a Police State.
I hate Jacqui, the two Homes Secretary, Smith with an unbounded passion. She is a vacuous self-serving sow whose only interest is her own. She is a career politician of the worst kind; sufficiently intelligent to engineer herself on the Gravy Train, sufficiently intelligent to learn and parrot the lines fed to her but stupefying stupid to be unable to understand their context.
Who or what is behind that troughing sow and what is that they are after?
Why do they want to impose ID cards on us, with the unbridled lust of a stag in rut?
There you go, my mask has slipped and I have returned to type; a ranter.
To be continued.
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