Tagged and Bagged
Dec. 20th, 2006 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianFuck. You. Raw, John Reid.
Foreigners living in Britain face compulsory biometric ID cards. And they won't say why. So apparently, sometime in 2008, someone's going to haul me in and take my fingerprints and make me carry an ID card around for no apparent reason. I feel kind of like one of those animals who get raised in captivity, tagged and then released into the wild.
By the time this comes into effect, I'll have lived in this country for over fifteen years. I've had indefinite leave to remain in the UK, which grants me pretty much all the rights of citizenship, ever since I arrived. I'm a citizen of the Commonwealth, for fuck's sake! And I'm going to be saddled with this asinine ID card and they won't tell me why they need me and every other foreign national in this country to carry this thing! How is a caucasian female nearly-30 year old Canadian with no criminal record who pays her taxes and contributes to the economy a threat that needs this kind of monitoring?
This does, however, explain why they are now charging me to have my Indefinite Leave to Remain stamp put in my new passport. Why? Because apparently the charge for renewing visas is what's paying for this idiotic scheme. You don't have to renew an Indefinite Leave to Remain visa - just have the stamp put into your new passport. So if they want to get money out of people with my status in the UK, they have to charge to rubber stamp my passport. Fuckers.
It's ridiculous. Every time something happens here - terrorist activity, that kind of thing - the one thing that comes out is that ID cards could not have stopped the incident from taking place. They are apparently purposeless. It seems apparent, though, that anything the government is trying this hard to put into place has some purpose to somebody, and I'd like for them to tell me what the hell it is with some actual solid factual backing behind their theories before they stick me with it.
And so I say, fuck this. Fuck it up the arse with a cactus sideways. I'm not sticking around to be treated, quite frankly, like some kind of criminal-in-waiting who needs to have these specific ID papers just to live here legally. I did all that - I filled in all the asinine forms years ago. I intend to do everything in my power to get the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dodgyhoodoo / thessalian family unit the hell out of this country in the next year-and-a-bit. I don't know how - it will probably involve a lot of research and a lot of money getting dumped into my savings account when I have a job again - but I want to get out of this place before it turns into a total fucking police state and from the conversations I've had with dodgyhoodoo, I am not alone.
In other news and concerns, I'm getting a little concerned about the updated iTunes I'm running. Surely it shouldn't be freezing every five minutes. When it freezes, a check of CPU whatsis comes out at something like 90%, when it should be at 5% maximum. I don't know what else it's doing besides playing songs, but I don't like it.
Foreigners living in Britain face compulsory biometric ID cards. And they won't say why. So apparently, sometime in 2008, someone's going to haul me in and take my fingerprints and make me carry an ID card around for no apparent reason. I feel kind of like one of those animals who get raised in captivity, tagged and then released into the wild.
By the time this comes into effect, I'll have lived in this country for over fifteen years. I've had indefinite leave to remain in the UK, which grants me pretty much all the rights of citizenship, ever since I arrived. I'm a citizen of the Commonwealth, for fuck's sake! And I'm going to be saddled with this asinine ID card and they won't tell me why they need me and every other foreign national in this country to carry this thing! How is a caucasian female nearly-30 year old Canadian with no criminal record who pays her taxes and contributes to the economy a threat that needs this kind of monitoring?
This does, however, explain why they are now charging me to have my Indefinite Leave to Remain stamp put in my new passport. Why? Because apparently the charge for renewing visas is what's paying for this idiotic scheme. You don't have to renew an Indefinite Leave to Remain visa - just have the stamp put into your new passport. So if they want to get money out of people with my status in the UK, they have to charge to rubber stamp my passport. Fuckers.
It's ridiculous. Every time something happens here - terrorist activity, that kind of thing - the one thing that comes out is that ID cards could not have stopped the incident from taking place. They are apparently purposeless. It seems apparent, though, that anything the government is trying this hard to put into place has some purpose to somebody, and I'd like for them to tell me what the hell it is with some actual solid factual backing behind their theories before they stick me with it.
And so I say, fuck this. Fuck it up the arse with a cactus sideways. I'm not sticking around to be treated, quite frankly, like some kind of criminal-in-waiting who needs to have these specific ID papers just to live here legally. I did all that - I filled in all the asinine forms years ago. I intend to do everything in my power to get the
dodgyhoodoo / thessalian family unit the hell out of this country in the next year-and-a-bit. I don't know how - it will probably involve a lot of research and a lot of money getting dumped into my savings account when I have a job again - but I want to get out of this place before it turns into a total fucking police state and from the conversations I've had with dodgyhoodoo, I am not alone.In other news and concerns, I'm getting a little concerned about the updated iTunes I'm running. Surely it shouldn't be freezing every five minutes. When it freezes, a check of CPU whatsis comes out at something like 90%, when it should be at 5% maximum. I don't know what else it's doing besides playing songs, but I don't like it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 01:34 am (UTC)And I thought Britain was supposed to be the cool, laid-back country.
Arseholes.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 02:37 am (UTC)Personally I've joined the "I ain't getting one" petition, and intend to stand by it and utterly refuse to get an ID card.
Hello.
Date: 2006-12-21 11:29 pm (UTC)That has to be the best first line in an LJ entry I've ever heard. :) And you're right about not being alone in wanting to leave; I'm certainly thinking hard about how much longer I want to live in England, if this is the way things are going. I get the NO2ID newsletter myself, and it's great news that at least we're not getting the 'National ID Register' anymore. And what's DRM?
Anyway, sorry to hear that you haven't been feeling too well lately.
Re: Hello.
Date: 2006-12-22 12:43 am (UTC)And hi, btw!