Papers, please

"State officials are to be given powers previously reserved for times of war to demand a person's proof of identity at any time.

Anybody who refuses the Big Brother demand could face arrest and a possible prison sentence."

Another loss of privacy and personal freedoms from the overlords in Britain who are breaking yet another promise to their peasants, the one to never impose a national ID card onto their subjects.

"LibDem spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'Ministers seem to be breaking their promise that no one would ever have to carry an ID card. This is a sly and underhand way of extending the ID card scheme by stealth.'"

He sounds surprised. I'm not, as this is just the latest in a long line of stories showing that the martinets who run things over there can't be trusted to keep their word.

In other news from the Queen's Speech (does she actually stand there and spout this crap?):

"Under a new welfare crackdown, benefit cheats will lose their handouts for one month and council staff will be given powers to use 'lie detector' technology to root out fraudsters."

Ooh, an entire month? That'll have them quaking in their house slippers. And they're not really serious about unleashing scores of low-level office drones with lie-detector machines (with their unreliable results) to impose warrantless exams on an entire population of people, are they? Wonders never cease.

"Dole claimants who refuse to seek work could be made to dig gardens as punishment or they may be ordered to spend an entire nine-to-five day in an office looking through vacant jobs."

How about just cutting them off? I imagine they'd look for employment then.

"Plans for a crackdown on cigarette sales are being reviewed"

Either ban them or don't, but quit this endless piecemeal "regulation" bullsqueeze already. The powers-that-be won't, though, because the tax revenue, the drug of their addiction, is too sweet and juicy to pass up.

More sad examples of how the Nanny State of England is rushing right off the cliff of rationality.