The Case FOR ID Cards

In an announcement today, the UK government said that ID cards would be introduced as soon as possible, despite overwhelming opposition to the idea, stating, 'these cards are vital for those people who sometimes forget who they are.'

The statement added that the cards would be both compulsory and mandatory for all citizens of the UK, going on to say that, 'whenever committing a crime, criminals will have to show their ID cards to their victims to prove that they are a legitimate British criminal, and not some just some illegal chancer from abroad.' This is seen by some commentators as a response to the Prime Minister’s recent call for ‘British criminals for British crimes’. Failure to disclose proof of identity while committing any crime could result in a fine of up to £5. However, there are rumours that the government is thinking of introducing special 'short stay' ID cards for foreign criminals, such as international terrorists, who only envisage staying in this country for a limited period.

In an exclusive interview with ATR, Jackboots Lockemup, the Home Secretary said, 'the the criminal fraternity's refusal to carry any form of ID, in the past, has meant that we waste many hours of police time on establishing the identity of criminals before we can even think about locking them up. In this day and age, it will simply not do. The police have far more important things to do for me than hunt for criminals. Frankly, the criminals must learn to abide by the law, if they want to go on committing crimes. They must learn that the only people above the law are politicians.'

'Speaking of which,' she continued, 'No longer will Very Important People - like myself - be greeted by ridicule from petty-minded jobsworths when we - not unreasonably - demand 'Do you know who I am?' when faced with their niggling attempts to sidetrack us from our important drinki…er… government business.'

At a recent press conference, Deadeye Prolestrangler, the Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police demonstrated another advantage of ID cards. 'The massive increase in bureaucracy,' the Chief Inspector claimed, 'means that, once these ID cards are introduced, my men will have another excuse for spending the majority of their shift in front of the computer in a nice warm and cosy office, instead of out on the street. My officers prefer not to go anywhere where they may have to interact with members of the public, or even - in extreme situations - criminals some of whom can be dangerous and could cost us several thousands of pounds in compensation payments of one form or another.'

The Chief Constable later added, 'Of course, this massive increase in bureaucracy will mean that I will have to have a much larger staff of my own. Which means employing lots of new young policewomen in their sexy unifor… er… where was I? Oh, yes. With the huge amount of extra data that these cards will produce just think of the number of pretty-but-useless graphs and charts we can use to brighten up our press releases!'