I already have enough identification to prove who I am if required to, but I'll be damned if I have to show my 'papers' to some snotty little oik in a uniform in the middle of the street. The National Id card is a typical example of bad policy making, a red herring if you will, designed to show that Blair is being tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. Realistically it will make sod all difference to the safety and security of the general public. What it will do is cost the taxpayer billions of pounds better spent elsewhere, not to mention the fact that this system (like all others of this type) is wide open to the same abuse the rest of these schemes suffer from.
In exactly the same way as a previous government banned the legal possession and use of handguns because of a couple of nutters lost their marbles, citing that banning all handguns would reduce gun crime etc. Well, the criminals still have guns and still shoot each other, the police and the general public, with an undaunted vigour.
The National Identity Card proposal is doomed to failure for exactly the same reasons which now mean that the UK Olympic pistol target shooting team cannot train on mainland UK. It is ill thought out and ill advised and is merely paying lip-service to some pie-in-the-sky political idealist, vote grabbing hack... all at the expense and inconvenience of law abiding folk like you and me.
Far better for the various departments (criminal and governmental and local authority eg benefit fraud etc) who's competence has been called into question when dealing with basic everyday operation and crime on all levels, be addressed and corrected with a little common sense instead of this blitz of inept legislation and PC focus groups which Labour traditionally are so keen on.
There is no 'magic bullet' to cure the social and cultural problems we have today, the sooner the politicos realise this the better. But you can sort of forgive them for wanting to be
'the one' to solve all of society's evils in a blaze of flashbulbs and glory
. No doubt if I was a self-serving egomaniac I'd feel exactly the same.
/soap-box