Smart Car

Check out what I saw in Richmond this afternoon - pictured. Yes, the future of observation is with us. The Smart Car mounted with CCTV, which roams the streets looking mainly for parking violations but also other "incidents" of lesser rule-breaking. I know this because I spoke to the two chaps driving the thing, which was parked on a back-street as they filled out paper work (neither took kindly to a photo -so I pinched this one from the web). By coincidence, today a first-trial of the long-debated national ID card, which takes place in Manchester. Eventually, Super Gee would like all of us to have one - for faster identification, you see, since a passport apparently not enough. The total-cost initially tallied to £40 billion, but more likely way more once implementation in swing (who can trust govt costing figures after the Millenium Dome fiasco?). And who pays? Me, directly - about £60 initially - and the rest by the tax-payer in, you know, a win-win situation. The ID first raised four years ago following 7-7, which killed 52 people and injured another 700. In 2005 we had more money for such a scheme, or it felt that way cr-unch. Eventually, the card will access a central database with our travel (scanned at Heathrow or where-ever), health, credit and so on and so forth. What a terrifying thought - private information in one centralised database accessible by me and my Big Brother. Boy, now I am feeling unsafe and inconvenienced+out of pocket. For a country that relishes its freedoms, we seem to choke on the hairball.