There was a time...

This is what passports used to be for

...when your passport was primarily not a document used to identify you, lest you try to enter a country or plane under false pretences and commit a criminal act, but a document that illustrated your right to seek refuge, assistance or protection against injustice. Then, somehow, once Labour had cheapened the entire fiasco that was getting one, an event in which you were vetted fully, and allowed anyone and everyone to get one in the name of "inclusion" (read= vote buying, or worse, gaining political pull), the document was deemed useless, in fact, suddenly you could no longer rely on it being enough that security services could do their job in tracking down criminals or monitoring their movements; they had to pin your identity to a piece of paper, in the name of security.

Now they are pinning it down to plastic; do not be fooled for a minute - the scheme is being rolled out as "voluntary". Remember that word "voluntary" when they come to fine you over your non-conformance or ask why you haven't dont your "mandatory voluntary" work without a single hint of irony in how those 2 words just do not fit in the same sentence.

What is more sickening is the way that the media, especially the BBC have treated this story; radio 4's morning and afternoon presenters (and I normally quite like Eddie Mair) completely evaded the point regarding this huge slap in the face of our civil liberties, instead pointing out that the cost of the scheme is mainly rolled into the cost of the new biometric passport system - the "you've will pay for it one way or another" defence just doesn't wash.

It is a common theme for the left to turn the meaning of things on their head; to downright distortions if not complete inversions of the truth of things - journalists should remember that when they next ask a labour minister what a passport or ID card are for - our protection or theirs?