Home owners were put under pressure when the Bank of England raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point.
Theincrease follows a series of rises in the price of household fuel and counciltax which has eroded family incomes. Electricity and gas charges have risenby 28 per cent in the past year, petrol prices by 12 per cent and water chargesare up by five and a half per cent.
So Tony Blair is firingright back with his proposal that the centrepiece of the next election willbe the introduction of a national ID card, saddling the chancellor with thejob of covering costs of setting up and running ID cards, estimated at between£10.6 billion and £19.2 billion.
ID cards are never a hotsell, tending as they do to impinge on percieved privacy and freedoms. Butdetermined governments usually find a workaround without stirring a hornetsnest with voters.
If crooked public servants can currently ‘sell’ Britains equivalant to social security numbers they shouldn’t have much troublemaking sure ID cards go where they shouldn’t, for the right inducement ofcourse.
2 comments:
"Where are your papers? You have no papers? You will have to come with us, please. Do you like Cuba? Have you ever been? Ahh, it is nice this year and the air conditioning and lights never get turned off..."
Scary stuff with these national id cards, cartledge.
I saw the story about hte surprise rate hike in Britain. Wall Street is set to celebrate a weaker than expected jobs report and a hike in the unemployment rate here in the States. I see the Fed funds futures are down to 18% so nearly everybody thinks the Fed's going to pause next week. Wouldn't it be ironic if there was a surprise rate hike here too just like in Britain. I mean, it's not like the inflationary pressures are any less than they've been for a while now. But I suspect Bernanke will bow to expectations and pause for now. Which means a 500 point celebration on the Dow.
I have been curious, so I did a trawl to find out what is happening elsewhere.
Really it sems to come down to how good the regulators are and how free they are to act.
I posted on that above.
ID cards are a worry.
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