Nixta Sinks

To label it a bandwagon is somewhat unfair since it obviously is an important issue, but it's infuriating when some of the closest of one's friends are passionate about a subject that one knows too little about to debate with them, having not had a vested interest in it through a) living abroad (in the US) and b) already using an ID system (in the US). One can't engage them in debate, nor see where they're coming from.

They have linked to articles in the past, but if I were to read those I wouldn't be cultivating a balanced opinion.

As far as I can tell, the UK ID system is flawed merely because it's not being run very well, is over budget and behind schedule (as rushed IT systems and millennium domes tend to be). I myself have a prototype card and the process was unobtrusive and quick (if it had worked properly - I seemed to bring all the networks down). Of course, it told our PM he was a known US criminal, so that's a bit bolloxed.

But that only manifested itself in last night's argument in the waste-of-taxpayers-money guise, which is perhaps slightly fair but really neither here nor there in the long term. Having an ID in the US is, if you're not interested in getting up to no good, a very useful and simple system. One card (for which you pay a nominal fee yourself) proves your age, that you have passed a driving test, validates your address, and shows visually that you are you, with records held on file and replacements purchasable by mail for $10 the first time you lose one (and they're not particularly easy to doctor).

The point at which I realised I was really lost was that I had been trained heavy-handedly by friends in Denver to always carry my ID (I even carry it here in the UK to help any confusion over my very large and squiggly signature, and because it's useful in banks and so forth), and I couldn't even remember if it was a legal requirement to carry it, or merely hellishly inconvenient to the police if one did not. Of course, thinking about it now, carrying a state ID *is* optional since you are required to pay for it. The upgraded driver's license must be carried when you're driving, as in this country, but that's included in the cost of a driving test.

Ultimately though I love my ID card because in Denver, waving the card out of the driver's window resignedly to a policemen approaching my car having pulled me over for speeding got me off a ticket with a smile and a "don't do that again". What such visual pacification is offered the British driver?