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Re: Free gas card
Thx.
It depends on who you ask and what he/she knows as to how fine the system
works.
It may interest you to know that an increasing number of cases, particularly
human rights ones, are referred to the European Court, i.e. outside the UK,
but the UK government has to abide by its decisions.
The problem is not always in the present, but in the future. Tony Blair and
some of his ministers have great dictatorial tendencies and have, e.g., used
"9/11" to introduce draconian measures that can have nasty effects on
personal liberty (I realise this is not confined to Britain). It took
massive effort to get sunset clauses introduced. Thus we need systems to
protect us from a prime minister who might turn nasty.
Now we have the identity card business. We don't have any and now the
government wants one which will probably also wind up being compulsory. One
of the arguments is security and fraud reduction, but I have not seen any
evidence where this really works. Any criminal can forge ID cards. Indeed,
some years ago I read in Germany that the ID card there was worse than
useless. Admittedly, technology has moved on and, I suppose, such a card
can be made harder to forge. And will I have to show my address? If so,
why the heck should I have to tell anybody when I move and to where I move?
Enough authorities need to know this already. And no, I don't want a
central database, thank you...
Compulsory cards that maybe you have to have on your person at all times
(like in some European and other countries) I personally find an appalling
concept. Right now I even have 5 days (or is it 7?) in which to produce my
car driving licence and insurance note. The other documents needed -- the
proof of having paid the annual vehicle excise duty (the payment for keeping
a vehicle on public roads) -- needs to be available at all times but it is
stuck to the windscreen so it is visible (and I don't have to carry it).
One of the problems with the House of Lords (the upper house of parliament)
is that the present government started a reform which, in itself, was quite
worthy but was started in a half-baked manner and never completed. They
don't even have a plan on how to continue. Almost all the hereditary peers
were booted out but not replaced with anybody. In the meantime there are
twice(?)-yearly appointments of people who may be worthy but many of whom
are just political time-servers.
Whilst I recognise that you can't have two equally-elected chambers you
would think they could devise a system taking ideas, for example, from the
USA or Germany. We have regional and local government; why not produce
delegates to an Upper House from that, at least in part? Now that we have a
Welsh Assembly and a Scottish Parliament, why can't they elect some
delegates? Etc etc.
Here endeth the rant.
DAS
For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
---
"greek_philosophizer" <greek_philosophizer@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1137521909.575612.316220@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
[...]
>
> Nice links.
>
> Since I am not British my opinion is not relevent but from what
> little
> I understand of the subject there is a widespread belief that the
> current
> system works fine and I would hope that they are cautious and avoid
> making
> things worse out of some desire to conform to a foreign ideal.
>
> I could use an SLR.
>
> .
>
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