Leatherhead Matters

The Government are quietly scaling back the scope of their National Identity Card Project and we are unlikely to see major progress until possibly, after the next election You may remember that biometric ID Cards is was one of the big ideas of New Labour in response to the domestically grown terrorist threat. However, iris recognition was dumped at an early stage as too expensive (although it is now in use at all US ports of entry).

From November this year, Foreigners (non EU) will still be required to submit to finger printing and carry an ID card with this biometric on it. A National ID Card will also be available for “any citizen who wants one“. However the Government are  now backing away from a national register of finger prints…..a key part of the National Identity card (Observer).

At the same time, they have begun to talk up enforcement of finger printing via other routes:

• The Identity & Passport Service (IPS) is currently scheduled to start collecting fingerprints for all passport renewals from 2009
• The Government are considering using coercion by UK vehicle licensing agencies. A National Audit Office report found that 90 per cent of people applying for a provisional licence were unable to complete the transaction online, and that although 25 per cent had been forecast to apply online for a provisional licence, only 4 per cent actually did so (more millions wasted on a government IT project). So the Government is thinking of requiring finger printing as part of the manual licence application process.
• People working with children and vulnerable groups have to be vetted by the Criminal Records Bureau and may be required to provide finger prints.
• Anyone arrested, automatically has to provide their finger prints even if, subsequently, they are not charged (Like Lord Levy). The data remains on the police database.
• Schools are increasingly finger printing pupils either on enrolment or, for library membership with support from the government

In effect the Government are developing a stealth strategy to collecting the nations biometrics. While still claiming there is no National Identity scheme they intend to grow the national biometric database via target groups.

The Government again appear not to have thought through the consequences of their strategy (as always they focus on presentation first).

So if you are a trainee, domestic terrorist what should you do?

1. Don’t apply for a driving licence. Just do what more and more young people appear to be doing….drive illegally (& try not to get caught)
2. Avoid hiring a car. Read more HERE
3. Don’t contemplate a career in teaching or child care.
4. Don’t apply for a passport or, if you really feel you have to:
   • Sandpaper your finger prints. However you need to do it monthly because they grow back!
   • Burn you finger prints off with acid. The finger prints do not grow back. Removing finger prints using acid or sandpaper has been used by criminals for decades.
   • Supply false finger prints. Read more HERE)
   • Use a plastic surgeon to erase or, even replace your existing finger prints. Read more HERE

The Government do not appear to understand that people desperate enough to avoid surveillance or, detection resort to desperate measures!

In the New NHS you won’t go to the Doctor, you will go and see the Noctor
So what is a Noctor? Simply …..NOt a doCTOR

That means NO undergraduate training in Anatomy, Biochemistry, Physiology, Pharmacology, Microbiology, Medicine, Surgery, Psychiatry,Dermatology, Obstetrics, Gynaecology, Ear Nose and Throat, Ophthalmology, Accident and Emergency, General Practice, Public Health.

NO medical degree taking 5 years to complete.

NO postgraduate experience of taking responsibility for diagnosing, prescribing, management of illnesses, a minimum of 5 years postgraduate training to reach higher grades.

In the New NHS you could, be visited at home, attend a hospital clinic or walk into a walk in centre dealing with minor illness and be treated and managed by someone who has about 13 weeks training.

So says GP Lite who is “still learning about my job, daily. I’ve been a Doctor for 14 years, an accredited GP for 8 and have dedicated myself to my profession for 19 years. Do I think I could be doing that after 3 months of training?     So I take my hat off to the Noctors. They are either exceptional talents or foolhardy dangerous practitioners, mistakes waiting to happen, the ticking time bomb of the NHS because of the lack of well grounded training.

Mr Leatherhead believes that the 13 weeks training can only be about learning a script and being fitted out with a stethoscope & white coat. It’s just a few weeks more training than the operators for NHS Direct get and all they have to do is to be able to navigate around a web browser and read a script (with empathy). You see it’s all about automating processes….very modern don’t you know! The machines in NHS Direct & the Noctors will be competent in diagnosing the most common problems associated with the presented symptoms but, machines cannot exercise judgement using several years training and experience.

If you don’t have a common problem you should be afraid, because we are witnessing the Rise of the Machines who have only one purpose…..to reduce NHS costs.

The Daily Mail reports today that ‘Britannia’, the trident wielding helmeted goddess, is to be scrapped from 50ps - and that Gordon Brown himself approved the decision. She is to be replaced with a “representation of modern Britain”.

Britannia first appeared on the farthing in 1672, followed by the halfpenny later the same year; the model used, then and later, was Charles II’s mistress, the Duchess of Richmond. She then appeared on the penny coin between 1797 and 1970, and on the 50 pence coin since 1969. When the Bank of England was granted a charter in 1694, the directors decided within days that the device for their official seal should represent ‘Brittannia sitting on looking on a Bank of Mony’ (sic).

Perhaps the best analogy is that Britannia is to the United Kingdom and the British Empire what Marianne is to France or perhaps what Lady Liberty is to the United States of America. Like Lady Liberty, Britannia became a very potent and more common figure in times of war, and represented British liberties and democracy.

During the 1990s a new term, Cool Britannia (a pun on the poem ‘Rule Britannia‘ by James Thomson [1700 - 1748], and the song adapted from it, which is often used as an unofficial National Anthem), was used to describe the contemporary United Kingdom. The phrase referred to the fashionable London, Glasgow, Cardiff and Manchester scenes, with a new generation of pop groups and style magazines, successful young fashion designers, and a surge of new restaurants and hotels. Cool Britannia represented late-1990s Britain as a fashionable place to be.

So Gordon has presumably deemed that Britannia is now un-cool, particularly since it’s associated with the Blair era.

The Mail notes that the decision was taken last June while Brown was still Chancellor. So now we know why he took his eye off Northern Rock at a critical moment and why he was distracted from securing our data at HM Revenue & Customs. He was dealing with important matters of State like redesigning the 50p!