…but, having read three different people write recently that British ‘Bloggers are united in their opposition to ID cards, I’d just say that I think they will be rather handy actually. I’d like my medical data stored on mine too, if that’s okay with everyone.

Not only can I see no sound principled case against them, but, having applied for a new passport online this morning, I’ve changed my mind about the likely cock-ups and suspect that, after a couple of years of bugs and “DAVID BLUNKETT’S DOG STOLE MY IDENTITY” stories in the tabloids, they’ll work shockingly well. It’ll be a bit like London congestion charging, but not so slick. And, of course, they’ll cost an absolute bloody fortune, but only in a Keynesian, men-digging-up-and-filling-in-holes kind of way. I’d knock up a “Yes2ID” button for people to put on their sites, but it’d be pointless—unless Tony Blair starts a ‘Blog.

I’m not making a case here (except against groupthink); I’m just putting my opinion on the record because it’s going to be my biggest “I told you so” for quite some time. It’s worth noting that the ‘Blogosphere’s undisputed king of banging on at tedious length about how the advent of ID cards will immediately cause the Earth to plunge into the Sun, destroying all human life but for a tiny community of Cambridge scientists sharing a deus-ex-machinon powered starship with Stephen Hawking, has turned out to be spectacularly wrong about chip-and-pin cards already. Coincidentally, one of Chris’s ancestors, Vivian Sid Barrett Lightfoot, was the man who calculated that human beings would suffocate if they travelled in trains at speeds over 40 mph.