How to get rid of Gordon Brown now!

if you want to get rid of Gordon Brown, you could sign the Number 10 petition, which currently has 64,901 signatures. (I wrote about it here and here)

The only other way is to vote Conservative and show that the Labour party has lost so much ground. The differential in the vote will show those in Labour that they must develop the spine to get rid of him. Voting for a minor party will only show that all main parties have been hit and so Labour are safe. Giving Labour a battering compared to the Conservatives will drive the message home.

The Petition to get rid of Gordon Brown: An Update

You may remember that I posted about the petition to get rid of Gordon Brown here, well here is an update.

The petition asking Gordon Brown to resign, which is here, has so far had 56, 278 signatures.

I must admit I am a bit disappointed as I would have hoped it would have more. Still, it is the most popular petition up on Number 10's petition website!

Sign the petition to get Gordon Brown to resign!

There is a petition on the Number 10 website asking Gordon Brown to resign here.

I urge you to sign it. Currently it has 4,611 signatures. Lets see if we can get that up to a million.

Iain Dale alerted me to it with this and Guido has this.

Gordon Brown's Own Goal!

I was interested to hear Gordon Brown highlighting the fact that there was a petition demanding an election in 2007 during prime ministers questions.

He taunted David Cameron who did not know it was there that it only had 26 signatures, and none of the shadow front bench.

Well, now it has a few more, 4,564, thanks to Gordon's publicity drive.

You can sign the petition here.

Does anyone like the London Olympics logo?

Just thought I'd ask as it seems to have gone down like a bucket of cold sick.

People have sent the BBC these alternate logo's some of which look quite good.

There is even a petition against it, here.

So, anyone like it?

That Iran Hostage Navy Crisis, sign this petition!

Some one has got this petition listed on Number 10's petition website.

Sign it!

It says:

We the undersigned consider the statement to allow members of Her Majesty's forces to sell their stories to the media to be a major government failure -and PR disater for the Royal Navy - and "heads should roll" at the highest level.

I agree, I have signed.

Metrication Madness! please sign this petition.

EU directive 80/181/EEC provides for everything to be measured in SI units. That is metric.

This is not a problem for lots of things but will be for others. For example if you own a vintage car, or are involved in model engineering you buy lots if things in imperial units. In particular the directive will ban when it comes fully into force in 2009 mentioning non SI units on the packaging.

In principle article 4 of the directive does make the following provisions:

The use of units of measurement which are not or are no longer legal
shall be authorized for:
— products and equipment already on the market and/or in service on
the date on which this Directive is adopted,
— components and parts of products and of equipment necessary to
supplement or replace components or parts of the above products and
equipment.
However, the use of legal units of measurement may be required for the
indicators of measuring instruments.

Were we living in any other European country this would of course be a get out of jail free card, and any one who wanted to could and would ignore the directive. As one person on a model engineering list observed:

Depends where it is implemented; you can rely on most EU countries to implement in a liberal fashion, while the UK Civil Service will go out of its way to interpret everything in the most narrow, constraining and damaging way.

And will later bleat about other countries not applying the rules they themselves have made, and impose on the UK populace.

So I urge you to sign the petition here, the full text of which is:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to undertake to secure permanent derogation from those aspects of European Union directive 80/181which will, at the end of 2009, make the use of imperial units of measure illegal.

And under more details:

The economic and social effects of this ban will be wide ranging. Industries which export world wide will have major problems - many parts of the world still employ imperial standards. Spare and replacement parts for existing equipment built to imperial standards will cease to be available - it will not be possible to package, advertise or catalogue such items. Thousands of citizens with interests in vintage vehicles, preserved railways, model engineering, etc. will be deprived of legal access to tools and materials to pursue their interests. Public opinion is firmly in favour of retaining the option to use imperial units of measure if they so wish.

As an example of UK based EU madness, consider the fate of animal rendering plant in the UK. The EU waste directive specified that waste must be properly disposed of etc. blah blah. All very reasonable stuff until you ask yourself the question what is or is not waste. Rendering plant across the EU produce tallow as a result of the rendering process which they then use as fuel to render the next animal. Saves on cost and carbon emissions. Good idea. Not here though. The bureaucrats have defined tallow as a waste product of rendering so now not only do they have to pay for fuel they did not have to pay for before, they also have to get some one to dispose of a perfectly usable resource.

You can read the actual EU directive here, and the working paper on it here.

*cough* Thanks to Renaud for pointing out the lack of "out" in get out of jail free, now corrected. (oops)

ID cards Tony Blair is not listening

But he is emailing his propaganda to any one who signed the anti ID cards petition! Well, here it is, with my comments in between:

The petition calling for the Government to abandon plans for a National ID Scheme attracted almost 28,000 signatures - one of the largest responses since this e-petition service was set up. So I thought I would reply personally to those who signed up, to explain why the Government believes National ID cards, and the National Identity Register needed to make them effective, will help make Britain a safer place.

So bugger off, we don't care what you think, here is what you should believe.

The petition disputes the idea that ID cards will help reduce crime or terrorism. While I certainly accept that ID cards will not prevent all terrorist outrages or crime, I believe they will make an important contribution to making our borders more secure, countering fraud, and tackling international crime and terrorism. More importantly, this is also what our security services - who have the task of protecting this country - believe.

Right, so it won't prevent all crime or terrorism, but it might help. What is more, I can show you a dossier I downloaded of the Internet which will be about as believable as Iraq having WMD. The problem is this, the security services may or may not think ID cards would be a good idea. To some extent they always have. Ever since Winston Churchill scrapped ID cards they have wanted them back.


In any case how is it going to make our borders more secure? We don't monitor them all the time in any case, people can and do get in via unauthorised entry points in any case. If securing the borders is the intent then surely we need a border police force rather than ID cards?

So I would like to explain why I think it would be foolish to ignore the opportunity to use biometrics such as fingerprints to secure our identities. I would also like to discuss some of the claims about costs - particularly the way the cost of an ID card is often inflated by including in estimates the cost of a biometric passport which, it seems certain, all those who want to travel abroad will soon need.

I see. So if I disagree with you I am foolish. How nice.

In contrast to these exaggerated figures, the real benefits for our country and its citizens from ID cards and the National Identity Register, which will contain less information on individuals than the data collected by the average store card, should be delivered for a cost of around £3 a year over its ten-year life.

Loyalty cards are not compulsory, and neither is the data captured used by an agency which can remove your liberty. By the way, is the £3 per year a commitment? Does it include for dodgy chips?

But first, it's important to set out why we need to do more to secure our identities and how I believe ID cards will help. We live in a world in which people, money and information are more mobile than ever before. Terrorists and international criminal gangs increasingly exploit this to move undetected across borders and to disappear within countries. Terrorists routinely use multiple identities - up to 50 at a time. Indeed this is an essential part of the way they operate and is specifically taught at Al-Qaeda training camps. One in four criminals also uses a false identity. ID cards which contain biometric recognition details and which are linked to a National Identity Register will make this much more difficult.

Firstly, Tony, you should not start a sentence with 'But" let alone a paragraph, it's lazy. Secondly the ease of ID theft has more to do with people not having open fires on which to burn sensitive documents, and just putting them in the rubbish than anything else. Other culprits are the ease with which people can obtain credit on the Internet or via post without having to turn up anywhere. It is difficult to see how ID cards will fix either of these problems, as the person, ID card and vendor will not be in the same place, let alone have the equipment to verify the ID even if they were. What is more, you do not need ID cards to solve this problem, you just need to make it a requirement that credit should be applied for in person, which is what you would have to do to verify ID with a card in any case.

Criminal gangs and terrorists move undetected across borders, not because of a lack of ID, but because we have little control over our own borders. (See above). As for criminal gangs and terrorists using multiple identities, you would have to get them in a position to verify their ID in any case. Given the state of the borders, there seems little point in doing that until the borders are secure, which would be a better use of the money.

Secure identities will also help us counter the fast-growing problem of identity fraud. This already costs £1.7 billion annually. There is no doubt that building yourself a new and false identity is all too easy at the moment. Forging an ID card and matching biometric record will be much harder.

No it won't. Either you don't understand how ID theft currently occurs or you are just plain lying. As above, ID theft happens because of lax checks on ID and people getting services in someone elses name without having to attend with any ID what so ever. What a national identity register will do is provide a single point where ID data can be mined if a criminal gang can get people on the inside (as they have done in call centers) or some pratt walks out with all the data on a laptop as has also happened for it to be stolen.

I also believe that the National Identity Register will help police bring those guilty of serious crimes to justice. They will be able, for example, to compare the fingerprints found at the scene of some 900,000 unsolved crimes against the information held on the register. Another benefit from biometric technology will be to improve the flow of information between countries on the identity of offenders.

I see, we are all to be potential criminals are we? Usually the police have to have reason to suspect an individual before they can acquire this sort of information. We are all to be suspects now. The Guardian has this on the subject, whilst the BBC has this. People say "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear." It is a trite statement, it is also rubbish. Whilst we may all be happy that what is now criminal behaviour should be, what if we have a government that makes protesting against government policy illegal? Think I am mad? Well now you can't do that without police permission in many places already.

The National Identity Register will also help improve protection for the vulnerable, enabling more effective and quicker checks on those seeking to work, for example, with children. It should make it much more difficult, as has happened tragically in the past, for people to slip through the net.

Sorry, this is just more spurious nonsense. The sex offenders register is supposed to deal with this problem, and any failings in the system have been procedural, rather than something to do with false identity. Again, the money to be spent on on ID cards would be better spent fixing the actual problem rather than parading ID cards as a solution to all ills.

Proper identity management and ID cards also have an important role to play in preventing illegal immigration and illegal working. The effectiveness on the new biometric technology is, in fact, already being seen. In trials using this technology on visa applications at just nine overseas posts, our officials have already uncovered 1,400 people trying illegally to get back into the UK.

There are other checks diligent employers are required to use to make sure they do not employ illegal immigrants, and those who do wish to employ illegal immigrants do so on the black market already, and are unlikely to stop unless caught. I can't imagine them wanting to check any ones ID any way. That is an argument for biometric passports, not ID cards, but again, how about securing the borders? Would that not be better? In any case it will not prevent illegal working unless it is a requirement for all employers to have the relevant equipment to check peoples ID cards prior to employment.

Nor is Britain alone in believing that biometrics offer a massive opportunity to secure our identities. Firms across the world are already using fingerprint or iris recognition for their staff. France, Italy and Spain are among other European countries already planning to add biometrics to their ID cards. Over 50 countries across the world are developing biometric passports, and all EU countries are proposing to include fingerprint biometrics on their passports. The introduction in 2006 of British e-passports incorporating facial image biometrics has meant that British passport holders can continue to visit the United States without a visa. What the National Identity Scheme does is take this opportunity to ensure we maximise the benefits to the UK.

I think there is a large misunderstanding of why commercial companies use biometrics for access to systems going on here. The issue large firms face is that your average computer user is a fool, who can't remember a secure password without writing it down for all to see. So if you have large amounts of valuable or sensitive data, and a lot of employees it makes sense to give them a way of getting into the system that they is not obvious (like someones first name as a password) or written down. Other countries that already have ID cards may be looking to have biometrics on them, but that is no argument for ID cards. The fact that passports may or may not need biometric data is a completely different issue as well.

These then are the ways I believe ID cards can help cut crime and terrorism. I recognise that these arguments will not convince those who oppose a National Identity Scheme on civil liberty grounds. They will, I hope, be reassured by the strict safeguards now in place on the data held on the register and the right for each individual to check it. But I hope it might make those who believe ID cards will be ineffective reconsider their opposition.

grounds. I have dealt with all the I see. Well, I oppose ID cards and the National Identity register on both civil liberties grounds AND practical grounds, and frankly the argument for them in practical terms is weak. I have dealt with the alleged 'fors' above. Also I have no confidence in the supposed safeguards as there already appears to be mission creep for the scheme. Let is be clear, ID cards will not solve the problems that Tony Blair claims they will. In fact so far, this is about the biggest non argument for ID cards I have heard. Note to Tony, must try harder, some of us aren't stupid.

If national ID cards do help us counter crime and terrorism, it is, of course, the law-abiding majority who will benefit and whose own liberties will be protected. This helps explain why, according to the recent authoritative Social Attitudes survey, the majority of people favour compulsory ID cards.

The majority of people favour hanging as well. Not much of an argument is it? Besides which the majority of people have not had to cope with ID cards yet, nor have they heard the arguments against. In any case the argument that it protects the liberty of the many is spurious. It doesn't. It makes us all suspects for a start.

I am also convinced that there will also be other positive benefits. A national ID card system, for example, will prevent the need, as now, to take a whole range of documents to establish our identity. Over time, they will also help improve access to services.

Firstly this is mission creep, secondly a lot of people get access to services without any ID over the internet already, which leads to the problem of ID fraud. If we are talking about government services, I can't think of many I have had access to requiring numerous forms of ID anyway.

The petition also talks about cost. It is true that individuals will have to pay a fee to meet the cost of their ID card in the same way, for example, as they now do for their passports. But I simply don't recognise most claims of the cost of ID cards. In many cases, these estimates deliberately exaggerate the cost of ID cards by adding in the cost of biometric passports. This is both unfair and inaccurate.

The difference between ID cards and passports is that I don't have to have a passport to live here. You have always had to pay for passports, you have not always had to pay to live here. Tony may not recognise the figures involved, but then the actual costs involved are not released as they are shrouded in "commericial confidentiallity", so no one can scrutinise the figures.

As I have said, it is clear that if we want to travel abroad, we will soon have no choice but to have a biometric passport. We estimate that the cost of biometric passports will account for 70% of the cost of the combined passports/id cards. The additional cost of the ID cards is expected to be less than £30 or £3 a year for their 10-year lifespan. Our aim is to ensure we also make the most of the benefits these biometric advances bring within our borders and in our everyday lives.

That is an argument for biometric passports, not ID cards. The costs argument is dealt with above.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Blair

I don't find any of your arguments sincere at all I am afraid.

You can view the petition here, which got 27, 985 signatures. I will be fisking the road pricing response later.

Road Pricing Petition Closed at 1,792,263 signatures

Yes, the road pricing petition has closed, with 1,792,263 signatures, which it appears will not change government policies one jot, but will get us all an email from Tony saying why we are mistaken.

Fantastic. I will look forward to it. Not!

The petition is here, whilst the BBC has this.

For more see here.

Road Pricing Petition, we're all stupid Apparently!

I have just read this most excellent Fisking, by Dizzy thinks, of a gibbering fool, Steve Richards, who wrote this article in today's Libdemograph Independent.

The Fisking is very good, I suggest you read it. However what irritates me most is the silly arguments about the road pricing scheme and why the petition should be ignored. Firstly Steve "let them eat cake" Richards isn't bothered about the poor being priced off the roads as he can get where he wants to go quicker. Fantastic. Pratt.

Then there is all the nonsense that the petition only got over a million signatures because of a scare mongering "viral" email. Tosh. I oppose road pricing because it is a regressive tax on the poor. I did not get the email, so my vote was not on the basis of what was in it.

However, unless the plan is to erect toll booths on every road in the land, then data is going to have to be gathered on where people travel, in order to send in a bill. This information will be in the hands of the state. They may not misuse it yet, but that is no guarantee that it won't be misused in the future.

We keep hearing of looking for suspects on the basis of profiling, and indeed looking to "prevent" crimes being committed by people who have no criminal record. What with all your data in officialdom being gathered in a central database and your every car journey being tracked, it won't take long before people have restrictions placed upon them because their "profile" suggests they might commit a criminal offence.

I have also written this on road pricing, whilst I wrote this on ID cards.

Road Pricing Petition, I have signed, have you?

There is much in the news about the anti road pricing petition which has got over a million signatories, and the government is set to ignore.

I have signed, and I urge anyone who has not to do the same.

I have signed it because I have the following objections to the scheme.

• It is a very regressive tax hitting the poorest hardest, particularly in rural areas where having a car is almost mandatory, particularly if you have a young family.
• It is technically complex and will not doubt cost a lot to implement, over run any budgets set for it and not quite work as intended.
• It is far too intrusive into peoples daily lives allowing government to know where people are all the time they are using their cars.
• If it were about green issues then you need to tax people on the fossil carbon people use, and you can do that by increasing the fuel duty on fossil fuels (whilst reducing the tax on bio fuels)

If you want to sign the petition you can sign it here.

The Telegraph has this on ministers ignoring the petition here whilst the Times has this. Let us try and get this up to two million signatures!

I urge you to Sign this petition!

To ask Tony Blair, the Prime minister to stand on his head and juggle ice-cream, because If he's not going to resign, the least he can do is provide us with some entertainment. You can sign the petition here!

It was suggested by Tim Ireland who's blog is here.

Hat tip to kjh on politicalbetting.com.

Gold for National Anthem!

Apparently if you want to replace "God save the Queen" with Gold, by Spandau Ballet as the national Anthem there is a petition you can sign.

It's here, and it's priceless!


If you have your own silly petition you want to get publicised see No 10 Downing Streets E Petition website here.

Fantastic!

Hat tip to Jonathan on Politicalbetting.com.