Rant of the Day

Identity Cards! I used to be against them on the grounds that I don't want anyone in authority to have the right to ask me to prove who I am when I'm simply going about my everyday life.

Now, I'm against putting any more information about myself into the hands of the egregious incompetents who run our beloved country.

I've had the pleasure and privilege of consulting assignments at the highest levels of Whitehall, and while I have a lot of time for many of the people I served there, I long ago came to the conclusion that large UK government departments are (literally) incorrigible. The lethal mix of Ministers' incapability of visualising the challenges of implementing their policies and the inefficiency of every aspect of civil service administration is just too intractible to be reformed. I'll never vote Tory, but the right wing are right when they point to too much government as the nub of the problem. Central government is an oversized badly-led nightmare in the UK.

Ask yourself, 'Which do I really want, a health service and an education system that works, or massive government systems that don't?' Until we get services provided by locally-accountable people we can actually eyeball, and vote out smartly when they fail to meet ordinary decent standards of performance, we're doomed to fourth-class public services.

As for identity cards, the cynics will say I shouldn't worry because they'll never get off the ground. Wrong! They'll stagger into the air at enormous cost, then they'll be abused by the same berks that willed them into existence. You know I'm right! Be very afraid!