Saturday 16 February 2008

Strong support for NO2ID in East Kent

Thanet NO2ID and Canterbury NO2ID campaigned outdoors today and walked straight into a groundswell of support. In Margate high street a surprising number of people were aghast at the governments ID card scheme and eagerly signed the NO2ID petition. Meanwhile, in Canterbury the local NO2ID group once more gathered donations and signatures aplenty.

Of the people we spoke to perhaps one in ten thought that “Identity” was a good idea. But what they meant by this was hard to say. I think most of them meant that the introduction of mandatory identity cards will help solve problems a, b, c, and d. But as we noted in a previous post, identity cards are not going to help solve problems a, b, c, and d. Therefore, the minority who view identity cards positively are basically seem to be uninformed rather than truly convinced.

But the overwhelming response to NO2ID’s argument was extremely positive and numerous ordinary people expressed disgust at fingerprinting and the government’s willy-nilly sharing of data. One member of the public actually spontaneously joined in with our campaigning!


In addition to gathering a healthy number of signatures for the petition, we also put a lot of leaflets into the hands of passers by, some of whom will hopefully contact us at a later date. Certainly today’s activities greatly raised NO2ID’s visibility locally, and we will continue to run stalls for direct contact with the public.

Campaigning works and today we proved that NO2ID means business.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I must say that the idea of mandatory "papers" scares the crap out of me. What is the movements view of the use of ID cards for specific groups (as due to be pushed forward soon, I understand)?

Gary said...

yes, i know how you feel--it's all very sinister.
the government cannot introduce mandatory ID cards overnight. if you look at the ID scheme carefully, you'll realise its a monster project. the really difficult bit, from the government's point of view, is getting people signed up. to insist everyone be fingerprinted within a short space of time would be politically unacceptable. so, the government is adopting "salami tactics"--it will co-ot segments of the population gradually. needless to say, NO2ID deplores these tactics, belives the government has been extremely dishonest to suggest that ID cards are "voluntary, " and urges people NOT TO REGISTER ON THE NATIONAL IDENTITY REGISTER. just don't do it. if your passport has less than five years on it, renew it immediately and this will give you/us breathing space.