Sorry - Britons never shall be slaves. They hope.

I think Chris was replying to my comment/joke suggesting he was working for UK Gov.

Andy

I must admit to being slightly confused about this as I can't see what's different to this and what we have to do now....

I fly a lot internally in the UK - have been for years and years - and every time I fly I HAVE to present either my passport or my driving licence as photo ID - I've tried other things but no-go.... so what's changed? Have I missed something?

m

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The current airport situation has, i believe, a mixed legal basis. The civil aviation laws are a bit carte blanche in that they allow the operator to refuse to take any passenger and ask for CAA/police help to do it. Refuse to show ID and the operator will refuse to let you fly (their choice). Walk away and that's it, you didn't break a law. Resist and you'll be arrested under public order offenses (or carte blanche anti-terror laws brought in after the New York attacks). The airports have the security and will refuse to let you fly due to the legal help, insurance protection and staff protection this gives, not because they are legally required to. It's hard to tell if Airline, Airport or Border staff check your ID on an internal flight as most airports do international stuff too, for which border laws apply. It is no offence to tell a police constable or border employee your name and address and then give them the choice of arresting you or ****ing off, if you are a UK resident still in the UK (and not showing any inclination to cross an international border).

So now go from your local flying or sailing club to a mates club across the country. No ID required, it's the same as taking a bus or driving. Go by ferry from a port that only serves a UK territory and likewise no ID unless the operator introduces it off their own bat.

The change in the law is to make the flying club people and small ferries check ID. The same legislation could be used to set up police checkpoints at every county boundry or street corner. If a yatchsman going from Cardiff to Bristol has to show ID, why not one going from Kingston to Richmond? If the boats get checked why not cars, busses, bikes, trains and pedestrians? Tell the copper you've left your £80 bit of paper at home and you are going for a ride in their van. You will then be guilty of the new offence of failing to provide documentary evidence of your identity.

The next step will be "allowing" you to "pre-book" your journey to avoid the queues to the checkpoints. All of a sudden HM Gov know where you are 24 hours a day seven days a week. What they do with that information is usually scary and involves camps with electric fences.

Andy

Yes, you have missed much.

Just to address your airline check in point first, in a previous life I was instrumental in setting up some of the UK’s fist Low Cost Carriers (LCC’s). In the early days the crude revenue management systems of the time priced long dated tickets at for example £1.00, short dated/walk up tickets at say £250.00 and were non transferable. Very quickly, a grey market developed whereby people bought the long dated tickets in bulk to sell to people who wanted to travel immediately or almost immediately at 1,000%+ mark ups. To counter this, the LCC’s stipulated proof of identity in order to protect their pricing mechanisms. This has evolved into photographic ID and passports.

Thus evolved the erroneous supposition that passports or ID cards were a government mandate, a supposition which for obvious reasons the LCC’s were not eager to contradict. To date, no legislative requirement exists for passengers to produce passports at check-in. After 9/11 the government found it convenient that this convention existed and should be perpetuated. In fact, under Schengen it is illegal for intra-European travel for this to be a requirement. For extra EU travel i.e. the United States it is also not a requirement but the carrier will be charged (much to their irritation) by that state for the costs of re-patriating a passenger who is refused entry for passport irregularities, hence the carriers eagerness to ensure all passengers have valid passports.

I have no knowledge of the poster who said the US will require DNA sampling at their borders but the UK home office has a not so covert initiative under way to ensure all UK citizens are on the police DNA profile database. To date, one in twelve of us are, including a seven month old infant.

Going back to your question “what have I missed?” you will see that under EU legislation it is in fact illegal to make you present your passport for intra-EU travel whereas under the new UK legislation the state can prohibit you from travelling freely WITHIN YOUR OWN COUNTRY unless you conform to the edict (which is why a statutory instrument was needed to make this law), thus contradicting one of the basic tenets of British common law and of magna carta dating back to 1215; the freedom of movement unhindered by the state, one of the very definitions of being British. It is this that the New Labour party is systematically overturning and it is changing the definition of what it is to be a free British citizen/subject that the New Labour party is challenging. You have been re-designated as something non-British and it was done to you without parliamentary debate.

In fact, the United States took this basic tenet of (English) common law and enshrined it in their constitution as a fundamental Constitutional right.

Next year there will be a general election. The best way you can act and something they fear most of all would be to tick the box that is NOT New Labour.

Good night and Good Luck.


As a postscript, readers may still think it plausible to monitor travellers on vulnerable public transport such as ships. However, consider this; if the state deems it “not in the public interest” to allow demonstrators to protest as say…the G20 summit they now have the statutory means to do so. An internal border at the M25 perhaps?

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Ahem, today's date?

DOH!

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So Australia won't be allowing in my Spaghetti tree either?

Andy

Is that under the new AFD Directive?

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How much does a man live, after all?
Does he live a thousand days, or one only?
For a week, or several centuries?
How long does a man spend dying?
What does it mean to say “forever”? - Pablo Neruda

Anyway folks, getting back to the original post........is this the motion that was refused yesterday? Something about storing info on people travelling to/from Southern Ireland from the UK? If so, what was all the feckin fuss about in the first place. Honestly, as if there weren't more important things in the world.......like me finding out one of my tyres had 1psi less than it should have. I was gutted when I found that out. Can you imagine my shock, horror and anger? Never mind my disappointment, I won't go into that as it's a whole new ball game. And then when I got home the missus told me she wasn't happy with our life. She said I was always watching sport on telly. If it wasn't football it was rugby, golf, darts, tennis or whatever else. So I sneakily booked a table for 2 to try and patch things up. By 9pm that night things were even worse........she hadn't potted a single red!!!

Chris

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"Life is too short to drink cheap wine!"

No that is something entirely different but see if you can figure out which famous book this passage comes from:-

""They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, , and, above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds.""

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Mr Orwell, I presume? Welcome to the Ministry of Love, or Lurve as we say in Newspeak...

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