The two sides of the ID card debate that's about to grip Britain

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SIX THINGS TO TALK ABOUT
For and against ID cards | The hottest new dating trend from NYC | How posh are your pots? Britain’s best cleaner | Let’s buy a big castle

🍸 What’s so bad about ID cards? Angela Epstein poses the question, and answers: basically nothing. She writes with one advantage over most of those offering views: she’s one of the few in Britain to have actually owned one, during a long-forgotten trial started towards the end of the last Labour government.

Epstein had her card for 10 happy years, and enjoyed being able to prove her identity at the drop of a hat - no need to fish around for multiple utility bills, or a passport. She mourned when it expired.

And no, she didn’t see it as a close-to-Nazi imposition: she points, irony of ironies, to Israel, where every adult has a card. It’s not dystopian, she says: they’re “just supremely security conscious – as the UK should be.” (The Spectator £)

🍸 If you’re looking for a contemporary argument against ID cards, you could start here… Craig Drake argued earlier this year that the state has failed to properly count the number of people who live here, or who are migrating here, and so it’s wrong to reward the failure of the state… with more powers for the state.

What follows is a deep dive on exactly how bad we are at counting who lives on these islands, with the important data point: for every extra 100,000 people who are either not counted properly, or who move here, there is “a requirement for roughly an extra two hospitals, six secondary schools, and thirty or so primary schools.”

Even when we know those people are there, we’re not good at supplying the infrastructure. When we’ve no idea who is here, that’s even worse.

“Rejecting ID cards but then appealing for the state to do a headcount of those living in the nation is not rejecting one form of statism for another, but demanding responsibilities from consensual government,” he argues. (The Critic)

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• the latest dating trend from NYC (it’ll be familiar if you’re of a certain age)

• a new fashion for posh pots - yes, pots

• Britain’s best cleaner - you’ll not believe what he cleans up

• A £1 million refurbished, but historic, Scottish castle for sale.

PLUS: find top TV, film and sporting picks for the weekend.

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