"John Rumm" wrote in message
news:428ddeb3$0$93768$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-
No, I really don't think that you'll notice the cost over the rest of
your life - or even over a few weeks. Most people seem happy to pay ?80
for a night's entertainment - it's not difficult.
The 80 pound is not so much the issue
It's been mentionedquite a lot :-)
(although in reality it will work out at bout 30 pounds per year I would
guess (id card, passport, drivers license at 300 quid for the lot every 10
years say)), but the say 10bn it costs to implement will represent the
equivalent of a few p on the basic rate of tax. Whether it actually turns
into a few p on the basic rate of tax, or more likely, gets hidden in some
stealth tax is another matter. However I fully expect I will notice!
I'm sure you will. But how many others will? How many others really know
what they're paying in taxes - all included? How do most people know the
price of most things they buy - things like bread, milk, meat, stuff which
is considered essential?
I only want something I need and then, yes, I'm prepared to pay any
price.
There is an important question regarding value here though. If you need a
bag of potatoes, and have the choice of two vendors offering product of
equal quality and one costs ten times the price of the other, I would
expect (all other factors being equal) you would opt for the cheaper one.
We grow our own, mostly. Otherwise we buy according to variety and the ones
we like aren't available at many places. I can honestly say that I've never
come across all other factors being equal when it comes to the potatoes we
buy.
So the same logic needs to apply to ID databases. Firstly what are your[1]
needs? There may be many solutions that can meet that need; so you need to
ask:
1) does an ID database and card meet the need
2) are there ways of meeting the need equally well, that would cost
significantly less.
[1] for broader definitions of "your" to include needs of society in
general.
Since there isn't a correlation between the potatoes we use and the ID
device it's irrelevant :-)
Look, it's going to happen at some time, it might not be in our
lifetimes. It's the way the whole world is going, I believe, whether we
like it or not. There's no point in tilting at windmills..
I am not aware of any other country that is contemplating such an
ambitious scheme as the UK proposals at the moment.
I'm not aware of anything either, at the moment. Or am likely to be.
It would also seem sensible that even if you anticipate that some system
of ID is inevitable, that we delay the process enough to let someone else
do the expensive and error prone groundwork first to establish what works
and what does not.
Oh, you mean let other people suffer first? That is, if they DO suffer.
That's not a charitable outlook.
Mary
--
Cheers,
John.
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