Rant: How ID cards could benefit fat people
12 Jul 2005 by Paul Davies
Queen Elizabeth: And me, did you miss me, Edmund?
Blackadder: Madam, life without you was like a broken pencil.
Queen Elizabeth: Explain?
Blackadder: Pointless.
Not nearly as funny, nor as well thought-through as Blackadder, but as pointless as an entire box of broken pencils: it looks like it's only a matter of time before those crazy ID card things hit each and every one of us with a senseless bill for a shameless scheme.
As people wise up to the situation, public opinion is moving against the plan at an astounding rate; it now sits somewhere between football agents and June Sarpong on the Great British spectrum of rubbish ideas. Furthermore, the Lords, being a generally sensible bunch of chaps, will chuck the proposal out with noble disdain.
Not that such trivialities matter anymore. New Labour has used the Parliament Act to defy the Upper House about a thousand times already; there's no reason to think that they'll stop now. And as for listening to the people... the powers-that-be don't even listen to the lickspittle Labour subservients—they're just there to vote the right way and stay out of trouble.
So it seems that Captain Botox and the Safety Elephant will have their way. Barring real poll-tax style riots, the 'plastic poll tax' is as inevitable as the incompetence that will accompany its introduction. Like a nation full of unthinking eBay addicts, we'll be forking out for a useless piece of plastic tat. Every single one of us.
While we're arranged in our serried ranks and marched into this Brave New World, one might wonder if we couldn't at least get something in return; if there isn't a way to squeeze some good out of this Orwellian obtrusion?
Well there just might be.
Given that ID cards are already going to contain your fingerprint, a scan of your iris and details of any communist leanings your grandparents may have harboured, they might as well contain your body-fat percentage.
This could then be used to stop human eyesores from buying certain foods in the supermarket, setting foot in McDonald's or sitting next to me on public transport. "The possibilities", as Eddie Izzard would say, "are endless!"
Very rarely in politics does the chance arise to force through a fundamentally favourable, but unpolitical, policy; politicians hate reason like a scouser hates the Sun. But with sufficient warning no one could complain, and anyone who enjoys being fat that much should be shunned by society like a leprous Jehovah's witness. Even if the fat of the land do rise up in protest, they're unlikely to attract a great mass of support, and after a couple of hours, they'll all be forced to go back home to gorge themselves some more.
Every normal person wishes, secretly at least, that there was a legally definable subsection of gluttonous swine that could be forced to fight their flab or at least bear the burden of society like the Germans support the EU. ID cards provide this opportunity. It has to be seized.
