Why stop at the frail -- lets tag everyone

When I am 85, if I last that long, I fully expect that I shall be tagged.

Quite how “bewildered”, “frail” or “forgetful” (or whatever other euphemism my loving relatives choose for my incipient Alzheimer’s) I turn out to be, doesn’t matter very much. It will simply be more convenient all round for people to know where the old dear is. I’m sure I shall have given my consent . Between a little electronic chip and the kind of constant vigilance that means you’re only allowed out on the town when someone gives you permission, or worse still takes you, the choice is obvious.

Frankly I’m more worried about losing it (the tag, I mean). If the plan is that the chip doesn’t need to be in a criminal-style leg-band, but can just be slipped into my mobile phone…well, I lose that enough now at age 52. What will I be like at 85? Perhaps it would be sensible to go for the subcutaneous variety that people put in their dogs.

That’s me sorted then. But I have no doubt that it wont be long before the plans for tagging (sorry, “tracking” is the new word of choice) Alzheimer’s sufferers, proposed by the government science minister and now backed  by the Alzheimer’s Society, will be taken up elsewhere.

The case for tagging children is surely even stronger.

We all regret how little freedom they get now, compared with the good old days when we would go off all day with a picnic lunch, to wander down disused railway lines, dodging all the health and safety hazards and the local paedophiles . . . Well, that kind of childhood fun could all be brought back, if the little dears were equipped with an electronic chip so that Mum would know exactly where they were.

Isn’t it the ideal compromise between liberty and control? Just as “empowering” for the children as the Alzheimer’s Society says the scheme would be for the oldies. And cant you already hear someone realising that if Madeleine McCann had been tagged, then we would now have a much better idea of what had happened to her.

In fact there really isn’t any reason to stop with kids. Wouldn’t it just be simplest to get the scruples over with and tag everyone. Then we could get rid of all those horrible CCTV cameras. The case for identity cards would be seriously diminished, so that particular scheme for burning money could be binned.

We could then all just get on with our lives, safe in the knowledge that someone knew where we were all the time. Welcome to 2008.

Comments

[Lord Truth]

Mr Mulholland still plays with this business rather naughtily-saying yes he has an ID card -then suggests it is less important than his gas bill.
Now I have always regarded France as a great nation.However,the thought that one can live there happily,as an alien,for twenty years or more ,taking full advantage of its excellent free education and healthcare systems ,merely by flourishing ones gas bill, surely demeans its image
The thought that strolling down a Parisian boulevard a policemen may approach one with the fearsome words'-Your gaz bill pleeze' is quite terrifying.That this despised and demanding piece of paper,usually thrust into the deepest recesses of ones bureau in the hope that it will soon go away,is in fact a major constituent of European civilisation,is alarming
Furthermore a gas bill is an extremely personal thing.It certainly tells more about my life-calme, luxe and volupte-than any ID card.
A policeman checking my thermal usage may well conclude that I spend my entire life walking around my appartment naked and pouring sweat...
Anyway -Vive Le Gas Bill!-but does it work for Algerians?

[SW Foska]

Gerard, as you are called Mulholland, maybe you might consider moving to Holland? I think it would be less confusing, and would lend your observations a certain authoritative air.

[Gerard Mulholland]

Oh dear, Mary. Lord Truth (4 Jan at 14:02:51) is so anxious to avoid being shown to have made something up, he or she mires himself even deeper! I have never yet met a French man or woman (unlike, apparently, 'Lord Truth' I talk to women as well) who claims that France is a Catholic country - particularly not the Catholics I know. When the newly divorced and very publicly shacked-up President Sarkozy spent a day in Rome recently to be installed as an honorary Canon of the Bishop of Rome's Cathedral of St John Lateran (an early 17th century joke that goes all the way back to the Protestant-turned Catholic "Paris is worth a Mass" Henri IV), he called on Pope Ratfinger who greeted him with an interesting homily of congratulation on the stability and inter-religious fairness of France's secular society. And when I tax French people with the fact of public holidays like Easter, Ascension, Assumption, All Saints, Christmas and (until recently) Pentecost and ask how they explain that in a secular society, they always give the standard answer "they aren't RELIGIOUS holidays, they're TRADITIONAL holidays. Well, I would have supposed that French Muslims would have a hard time accepting that but two years ago the Rector of the Paris Mosque's passionate defence of the secular society as a reason why Muslim women should agree to remove their veils in public buildings was heart-warming to hear. And discussions I had about that with several Muslim neighbours convinced me that secularism really is accepted as the norm for French civil society by Catholics and Muslims as well as by us of the atheist majority. 'Lord Truth' evidently didn't listen to the defences of secularism by both the Rector of the Paris Mosque and the Pope and instead proceeds to spoil her or his otherwise interesting point of view by supporting it with popular urban legends which bear no relation to reality. You know, brow-beating people (into concurring that you might have a point to argue) just so that the conversation can end and they can get away from you is a very unscientific and deeply flawed procedure for amassing evidence to support a point of view. Harrassing polite French people with tired-out and absurd old fairy-tales insisting that there must be some basis for them comes into that category. He or she should try living among the ordinary people of continental western Europe instead of subscribing to UK tabloid myth! You will, I am sure, have noticed that her or his bald assertions are supported by nothing other than conviction and rumour and the evidently desperate hope that I too know less about the subject than I seem to. Well, tough for Lord Truth. I have lived in France for nearly 20 years. I have a son just about to take his brevet. I am the lucky recipient of the generosity of the French Health service in taking care of my diabetes and my serious heart condition and my wife -also not French- is still in the process of benefiting from their all-embracing coverage of her mastectomy and series of reconstruction operations. I know all about French bureaucracy thankyou very much. I have one French neighbour who still hasn't updated either her ID card nor her Electoral Register from her old address in a different Department since her move also almost 20 years ago and she has no problem with Passport renewal or other procedures. When I first registered to vote as an EU citizen resident my official ID was REFUSED as proof of address because the electoral registration rules -which, amazingly, are written by the police- correctly regard ID cards as a load of unreliable rubbish. I ran a business (in the bureaucratic sense that I was self-employed) and nobody ever asked to see my ID card right up to retirement. It is true that I have never had the need to have recourse to the welfare system but I understand that things like electricity or gas bills are accepted as good as ID cards in that sphere as well as in all others. And electricity bills and gas bills for ID are handed out to any person who asks by the simple process of substituting the demanders name for the previous user's on a copy of the most recent bill for their declared place of residence. Why? Because it's the only thing the Police accept as a definite proof of ID and they ask for it IN ORDER TO ISSUE AN ID CARD! The whole system is as mad as UKs would be if they were to still go ahead with it! When a Gloucester Police Officer told a French TV reporter during the Fred West discoveries there "This couldn't have happened if we had your excellent ID system" meaning, I suppose, that he supposed that the French Police know where everybody is and all those girls couldn't have gone missing, the reporter wasn't the only person to gape in incomprehension. In France they even have regular TV slots looking for missing people of all ages. There are thousands dissappear every year. ID cards are NOT compulsory. They are simply strongly advised. In order to set off on the road of bureaucratic adult life you need one go at ID registration -whether you are French or not- and thereafter only foreigners are theoretically "obliged" to renew every 5 or 10 years. Finally, I don't carry my passport, I don't know anyone who's ever been asked for their ID card by the police and I've never heard of a single prosecution for non-possession thereof.
Lord Truth is so miffed she or he's missed the point. I entirely agree that ID cards are fatuous and useless and a gift to none but the blackmarketeers who make a fortune out of forging them for those few who have a problem and I am utterly opposed to their introduction or maintenance anywhere. I am also completely against tagging other than as a penal sanction or as a voluntary medical measure. Freedom is indivisible.

[Tony Francis]

If we are to believe Wiki, a large number of phone calls in Germany and Holland are tapped and/or recorded. Also, illegal wiretaps are allowed as evidence in German Courts. This is in contradistinction to US Courts which would rule illegal wiretaps as inadmissible evidence.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_tapping
The US Constitution, the Fourth, Fifth, Fourteenth Amendments, along with various Civil Rights Acts make phone tapping, without a warrant, illegal. Several cases confirm this. Still, wiretapping is allowed for "national and domestic defense".
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act
For practical purposes, one should consider all phone calls, and especially cell phone calls to be "outside the realm of reasonable expectation of privacy." The same applies to internet usage.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance

[Lord Truth]

I understand Mr Mulhollands passionate irritation but there is an element of meretriciousness about his comment that I feel must be cleared up-and of course,although Lord Truth sometimes ,as I have indicated-paints with a broad brush,he never 'makes things up'
There is a huge amount of material on the internet regarding these matters but it can still seem confusing.
First however,regarding France.
Yes of course we all know France is a secular republic -but do the French? I have never spoken to a Frenchman about this without them finally saying ,with either exasperation or pride 'At heart we are really a Catholic nation'.France is usually described as a Catholic country with a secular culture-whatever that means.
Mr Mulholland says that British ID attitudes arise from WW2 propaganda where ' evil Gestapo officers stop people to ask for their 'papers'-but it surely goes much further back-beyond the French revolution into the murky dictatorships before it.
Indeed this is not a trivial matter.Much of the unease the British have about the EU stems from the historical reality of this unBritish intensive policing.
Its true that after the nightmare of WW2 most compulsory possession of ID cards was abolished in once occupied Europe yet they are still neccessary by default-saying casually 'most people have them'as if they were not universal and important is deceptive
Mr Mulholland obviously does not have children in education nor needs public healthcare or any social welfare benefit or a driving licence nor does he run a business.
Its true that other forms of identity are now available but I suspect that if stopped by the police, your collection of debit/credit card statements/gas bills etc would be brushed aside with-show me your ID card please.
When I spoke to a Frenchman at the local embassy yesterday he expressed surprise.Of course everyone has one-And if the police stop you and you are not carrying it?-They type your name and address into a small computer they carry to check you have one.And if that fails then presumably you can be taken into detention for further investigation(a major cause of recent riots in France).All this is a long way from simply not having a birth certificate
Mr Mulholland says 'Very very few five year olds carry ID cards.'
I am glad. Indeed I hope that very very very few five year olds carry them.Indeed the thought that any carry them at all considerably disturbs my remaining Protestant corpuscles.
Mr Mulhollands ability to casually flash his passport at officials when neccessary should not blind him to the realities that most people on the continent face over matters of identity
Ironically universal tagging would remove the police from the streets and produce a much more relaxed society

[paul potts]

Well, dear, just be philosophical and don't think about it.

Paulo

[Gerard Mulholland]

Mary, your correspondent mistakenly calling her- or him-self ‘Lord Truth’ writes (2 Jan at 13 :59 :44): “A 'Tag' is no different to an identity card carried by law thoughout all Catholic Europe and the rest of the world. A French five year old happily trots to school, her identity card proudly in her bag. If people throw away or destroy their cards they can be punished (-as you can for driving without a licence)”.

Oh dear, Mary, Lord Truth is so wrong about this he or she cannot have done other than just make it up which I find disgraceful.

I live in France.

1.
France is NOT part of “Catholic Europe”.
France is proud of being a secular Republic.

2.
ID cards are NOT compulsory here in France.
Nor are they compulsory in most of western Europe, “Catholic” or otherwise.
They do remain compulsory in most former Communist States – which .
They are voluntary.
Here in France most people get one and rarely bother to renew it because they don’t see the point and, frankly, neither do I.
Even the police (who issue them) don’t accept ID cards as proof of identity, nor as proof of address!
ID cards are useful in all sorts of bureaucratic situations like passport-free travel in the EU, ID for cheques or for Social Services purposes but –apart from EU travel- other documents are accepted just as well.
Very, very rare are French five year olds with ID cards as most parents don’t see the point of that even more than of renewing their own.
If you lose your ID card and a) notice and b) can be bothered, you simply report it lost and apply for a new one.
Nobody has ever, ever, been punished for “destroying their (French) ID card” any more than anybody has ever been punished for destroying their UK Birth Certificate.

3. All this guff about ID cards being compulsory on the continent is a relic of UK WW2 propaganda about nasty Nazi Gestapo agents in dirty raincoats harassing people for their “papers”.
Both Germany and the former Nazi-occupied countries in western Europe got rid of them immediately. They only survived under Stalinism and the remaining post-war Fascist States of Spain and Portugal.

[Lord Truth]

(forget irony)
First lets get some matters clear.
Despite mutterings about Western philosophy, liberte egalite etc, what people here really mean when they write about 'freedom' is in fact the fanatical obsession with individual personal freedom that is the basic main characteristic of the five great Protestant democracies:the USA Britain Canada Australia and New Zealand created by the Protestant British Empire-which-despite Beards sneering contempt (see next post) has incidenally been the greatest civilising force in the world for a thousand years or so( I paint with a broad brush)
Since viciously knocking this Empire has been a thriving industry for the last forty years or so its worth remembering this
A 'Tag' is no different to an identity card carried by law thoughout all Catholic Europe and the rest of the world.
A French five year old happily trots to school ,her identiy card proudly in her bag.If people throw away or destroy their cards they can be punished (-as you can for driving without a licence)The same penalties would presumably apply to tags.
That a tag shows where one is at any given time is no different to the police stopping you at any given time-in fact fairer as police often stop people for irrational reasons
It is true that by losing one freedom one can gain others and there would be huge gains-women and children could walk about the streets day or night-crime and domestic violence would disappear and there could be a huge reduction in the police force
Its unfortunately true that personal freedom has been curtailed recently in the Protestant countries mentioned but this has happened before under the threat of war (I do not agree with this current war view but most people do)and CCTV cameras are only tolerated because people really do feel more secure.
However I find some of these obsessions with personal freedom embarrassing. Americans for example are always going on about'privacy' and the internet.Surely they must realise that peoples private internet use is frequently monitored? Everything I do on my computer probably goes to M16,the CIA and Mossad as unfortunately do Prof Beards and many other journalists-as probably even the most miserable of comment writers- who have had the impertinence to pull their mouths from the public tit that provides endless sweet media/entertainment pap and have thrust their heads up to show they are not mind dead zombies...
Yes, they have got a little list.. and we are all on it...
I was once greatly amused in this respect watching an American business programme and a reporter enthusing about a business that proudly 'Processes every phone bill in America..Its an Israeli company' Well of course the Israelis cant actually listen in to phone conversations but surely its useful to know who is phoning who?
The question is does it matter? -that someone sitting in an airless bunker is reading my emails? It doesnt worry me-though being proscecuted for what I write is a separate matter
Most obsessions with privacy relate to fears of sexual rather than political revelations and these will fade away in a few years.
Anyway humans are largely animals and animals have no privacy at all- two sniffs and your dog knows exactly where something has been...
Lets go for tagging!

[Jenny]

Jussive subjunctive was what I had in mind ('fiat lux' etc as Foska mentioned), according to Latin teachers throughout the land. Though maybe it is one of those Latin constructions I always thought existed in English terminology but actually they don't.

[Michael Bulley]

There are two ways of inventing and using grammatical terminology: you can base the terms simply on forms and then explain how they can be used or you invent terms that give some indication of the use of the forms. The former is probably the safer way. So, going back a bit on what I said before, I think it's probably easier to say that, in "Let's (= let us) go", "let" is an imperative (with "us" as the direct object) but that it's not being used here to issue a command. In other words, that here the imperative form isn't doing what its name implies. There's no necessary reason why it should. After all, you have present tenses that do not indicate anything about the present and singulars that indicate lots of separate objects. "The terms describing parts of sentences carry no implication about the functions of those parts towards producing the meaning of the sentence." (M.Bulley, Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, 1999). Or, if you'd rather have it from Wittgenstein, "Grammar does not tell us how a language must be constructed in order to fulfil its purpose..." (Philosophical Investigations, 496).

[SW Foska]

If I were to say 'fuck you', that would apparently be a subjunctive. But it's the season of goodwill, so I won't.
Grammatical categories being man-made, they are imperfect and overlapping. Their form and use differs greatly between languages. So in French you can have imperatives in the 1st person (e.g. 'allons!'), but Quirk says these are not imperatives in English. How he 'knows' that, or how the OED person 'knows' different, I've no idea. I expect categorizers are influenced by the similarity or dissimilarity to the indicative. Serbian 'Hajdemo' = 'Haj+idemo' (lit. Hey! we go) is classified as imperative, but Romanian 'Hai sa mergem' (lit. Hey that we may go) is called a subjunctive. Nor have I the slightest clue who God was talking to when he said (in Dutch) 'Laat er licht zijn', but He certainly used what is commonly recognized as a subjunctive in Romance and Slavic languages: Sia luce, Que la lumiere soit, Sea la luz, sa fie lumina; Da budet svet; Da bude svetlina, Neka bude svjetlost &c.
Hebrew goes in for cohortatives in the first person 'Let us make man in our own image' is apparently one of these. As for the jussive, 'the rules governing the jussive in Arabic are somewhat complex' but I'll let Mary fill you in on those.

[Eileen]

wouldn't the let's phrases be examples of the formulaic subjunctive? It seems to me that if you remove the contraction it becomes clearer: let us pray, let us go, let us have a happy new year...

[Tony Francis]

Concerning Jacques Le Goff: His book "The Birth Of Purgatory" puts forth the thesis that Purgatory was "invented" sometime late in the 13th Century. It seems to me that his entire book disproves this assertion. (It is true that Summa Theologia mentions Purgatory in the Supplement which was written after Aquinas' death in 1275 - a fact that Le Goff fails to discuss. This would tend to support his theory, despite the information in his book.)
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Le_Goff
Another French historian of interest is Fernand Braudel
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Braudel
His work: "Civilisation materielle, economie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siecle" just goes on and on. Does it appear to anyone else that French historical writing is a little undisciplined and rambling? My favorite writer in this genre is Marcia Colish. She doesn't have a Wiki page of her own.
Dear F. Gamberini: You are correct. Wiki is both good and bad. I love it and hate it, all at the same time. One must be careful, because a lot of information in Wiki is just wrong. But one must have a certain level of knowledge to realize these discrepancies.

[Michael Bulley]

What took my eye in Jenny's earlier comment was not the question of irony, but the idea that "let's tag" was a subjunctive. I'm usually fairly confident about English grammar, but "let's" gives me doubts. The OED says "let" in "let's sing a song", for example, is an imperative. Do we feel it as one, though? If you say to Annabel "Let's go to Uncle Fred's next week!", do you feel as if you are ordering Annabel to allow herself and you to go to Uncle Fred's? Or do you feel you are appealing to some general power of permission in the world at large to allow the two of you to do it? I don't think I feel I'm issuing an order when I say "let's", and grammar ought to be based on how you sense words are being used. So, despite the historical evidence, I think I'd tentatively go along with Jenny and say "let's" was a subjunctive, but duck out, for the moment, of explaining exactly how.

[SW Foska]

Tony, I don't think Dennis (or Greg, aka Pope Gregory XIII) authorise a year zero. Personally I can't see the point in one. Cities have a 'Km zero' point from which distances are measured, but it is not 1 km in circumference, it is in theory infinitesimal.
Happy birthday Mary! A good day for historians' birthdays, encompassing not only the distinguished J. Le Goff but also the up-and-coming S.C. Kenny, a specialist in medicine and race in the American South. I tried to have my son born on 1 Jan but we were a few hours early.

[F.Gamberini]

Tony Francis' post alerts me to the need not to rely exclusively on any one Wikipedia article. I'm saying this because I too, in the thread on "things R.s did at Xmas", quoted just one Wiki article

(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesus&oldid=179250920)
on the subject of the exact meaning of CE/BCE.
In fact, there are a number of interrelated Wiki articles dealing with this, and they differ in detail. It's all a bit of a tangle, and deserves a more careful look.

[Tony Francis]

Dearest Foska, Ironically, you have failed to tell us whether there is a "year zero" in the Dennis Era.
http://www.en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Year_zero
Many of us have put our lives on hold waiting to find out your answer to this question.

[SW Foska]

It's ok Jenny, I have proof the article isn't ironical, proof which I have deposited with a lawyer in a small town not far from here. Taylor is just jealous of your perspicacity, and has the least irony-prowess of anyone.

[Jenny]

Er, thanks Taylor. While you are absolutely right, it was very rude and unnecessary to say anything, I regret it, and as if you could care less I'd like to mention that I never ever normally do things like that, I still don't think it's all that helpful to resort to name-calling.

Also, I was 95% certain that the whole article was meant ironically - I just couldn't quite believe Prof Beard would play tricks on us like that. Joke's on me, by the looks of things!

[Taylor]

The most interesting thing about this blog is seeing the people commenting who don't seem to get the irony (or maybe irony as an entire concept).

I think it made my day to see Jenny, being so priggish in her grammatical correction, completely miss the point of the blog.

Maybe it confirms everything you ever thought about Lynn Truss

[Gerard Mulholland]

Mary, you may care to tell the otherwise right-on Wilfred Knight (30 Dec at 01:37:09) that if his dad was in the British Army he didn't go up those cliffs (at Pointe du Hoc).
The British, Canadian and Free French got the famous beaches and sand dunes to storm. They were a bloodbath but they were nothing compared to the horrendous cliffs of Omaha Beache. For once -in a joint operation- it was the Yanks who got the hardest bit and it was only by astounding acts of heroism that they made it to the top only to find that the big cannon they had gone to disarm had been moved inland. The cannon were designed to bombard the landing beaches where the British, Canadians and Free French were. The cross-fire machine gun nests that took such a dreadful toll on those brave US Rangers and the observer points to direct the now inland cannon fire turned out to be all that there was at the Pointe and that made the situation much worse because without the observer points the cannon couldn't be directed and the Germans made superhuman efforts to recapture the observer points. The US Rangers had to hold the cliff top under siege for two days losing 60% of their number - the most terrible percentage of the entire landings. If Wilfred Knoight's dad was a US Ranger he was one of D-Days gfreatest heroes. If he was in the British Army he was still a hero but he owed his life as much to those US Rangers as to his own efforts.

[Wilfred Knight]

Mary : You're joking of course, British tongue-in-cheek and all that ?
My dad told me that one reason he went up those cliffs at Normandy., was that he was protecting us kids from having to have identification numbers and papers, because we were English, living in the land of freedom.
Mary, tell me my dad was wrong, putting his life on the line day & night, after day & night,fighting for England's new police state. Tell me Eric Blair was just an old drunk who really did not believe that totalitarianism would ever take root in mother England.
Tell me Mary, please before you are arrested for driving two miles over the limit with half a shandy in your bloodstream, a fag in your mouth, listening to your radio , and talking to your passengers. Heaven forbid ! Guantanomo welcome to Britain - land fit for bloody heroes !
wilfred knight, expat, orange county california

[SW Foska]

Happy 30th Dec 2007 DE everyone.
Not an unreasonable idea, tagging; and more civilized than Matthew Parris's recent criminal incitements in this online newspaper to the decapitation of cyclists, for which I'm sure you'll agree he should be fired.
But beyond the proposition's 'democracy', you still presuppose a subject/object relation, a binary yet unequal heterology, a sadistic mastery of the others by the we, a hammering administered to the referent by the signifier on the anvil of the signified, even if a (moibian?) reversal of roles is envisioned at the onset of senectitude.
There must be something in the mediatic air - seasonal provocation soliciting comment at any price. Good practice for when bibliometrics comes in, but ethical?

[Jenny]

"Let's" - nice subjunctive expression, with an apostrophe please. Very sorry, I know it's hard and you're in a rush, and usually I think it's really unattractive to be the person who says something, but it is the title!

Also I think it's a terrible idea. I am 18 and I like to think I am entitled to go to places sometimes without my parents being able to trace my every move. Of course, it's never sensible to set off and for nobody to know where you'll be, but for responsible adults surely we have the right to choose who we tell - and not always the same person every time.

[Mario]

First you'd better change all the major philosophical tenets of Western democracy. The ideas of liberty and freedom our society is based on do not support forced tagging of human beings like dogs, no matter what the reason. The one exception is the criminal, who has LOST his or her liberty and freedom.
What you are saying is utter rubbish.

[anthony alcock]

We had a human tracking device at the top of our street called Mrs Scott. The happy days of proletarian solidarity in back to back Liverpool. And I don't bloody think.

[dr venables preller]

From the interesting information (if accurate) regarding opaque 'infinty mike' applications for mobile phones, it seems possible that there is little need for identity cards or tagging for all.

All that might be needed is to make cellphones seem more essential (perhaps by incorporating some of the subscriber code numbers into NI or Taxpayer numbers and making them unique and portable) and possibly adding some hidden service subsidy, perhaps under the guise of a government contribution for extra data collection requirements.

Collectors of old models for which scrap meltdown used to set the price might find surprising demand for their alternative investments one day. The 'brick' models might also be useful for managing phone muggings wthout necessarily being considered to be a defensive weapon.

[Elizabeth]

I still remember by mother finding an old woman wandering around our estate that came from about a mile away who had wandered off.

My father later developed dementia and the only way my mother could keep my father within range was by taking the car keys away (but then he did have chronic asthma).

As for children, my 10 year old now has a mobile. It was cheap (no chance of being mugged for it) and he pays for the calls from his pocket money (financial responsibility). My younger child will be getting one next birthday under the same terms.

Sometimes you need to take precautions. When I was growing up, these things were never talked about openly but with "disguised" meanings (if you get my drift). If it just means they can ring and let me know of a change of plan, fine. If I can ring and find out what is happening, fine.

If the "authorities" can find out their last position in the worst-case scenario, then any little helps.

[Linda OReilly]

Mary, I adore you. I'm 58 and am all in favor of the kids chipping me when my faculties fail. What will I care?

[D.L. Stephens]

To Roger, no I do not carry a mobile phone,the implications you impute to them are obvious. If say twenty years ago it had been suggested that we should all be tagged there would have been outrage. Now we have a largely infantilised population who queue up to pay for their own tags, and feel naked without them. Nu labour and the eussr can not believe their luck.

[Klaatu]

Perhaps this concept could be taken one step further to the level depicted in the 1970s film, "Logans Run". Every member of the society depected therein was implanted with an identity chip from birth. They all had a jolly time until they reached a certain age, at which juncture they were called in and killed.

[Rosie]

If the aim is to make Dubja's life more difficult then everyone should leave their phone switched ON all the time. Dubja and his friends are welcome to listen to traffic passing, the unattended TV, gentle snoring. The more data is collected the less chance anybody has of making sense of it.

[kendal streete]

Its happening already in a more sinister way.
Leave your mobile switched on, amywhere in the world,just sitting on the mantlepiece for example, and it can be accessed by the American National Security Agency ( NSA) who are based at Menwith Hill outside Harrogate and they can use it to eavesdrop on any conversation within earshot of that self same cell-fone. A side benefit for them is when you actually use it--then they can hear everything clearly--but leave it switched on-ANYWHERE-and the Yanks are there--earwigging.
Ask anyone who lives near Harrogate, and they will tell you only to switch it on when you need to use it--otherwise kill it!
Make Dubya's life just a tad more difficult.

[Tony Francis]

There is increasing medical evidence that regular participation in mental activities such as crossword puzzles, word games, chess and brain teasers can delay or ameliorate the onset of Alzheimer's and dementia. Go to PubMed (the NHS site) for articles. Paranoid schizophrenics and other delusional people frequently believe that a government microchip has been inserted into their body. This can follow an unrelated surgical procedure. I see about one or two of these a month. Some companies are trying to get state legislation mandating chip insertion into all animals. Apparently there are no GPS type inserts available due to antenna, power consumption and signaling problems.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_%28human%29
Up to 10% of animals have developed cancer (or sarcomas) around the chip insertion site. This will probably delay the mass insertion in humans. There are other civil libery concerns.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID
When the government can't keep track of the amount of taxes I have paid, it makes one wonder how they would ever keep track of 300 million chips inserted into all citizens. Traffic photos of girls and boys in cars, running red lights, doing all kinds of unseemly acts are on the internet. You are on your own finding these.

[Wes]

Cell phones allow the tracking and monitoring of conversations. The only way to stop this is to pull the battery. Turning it off won't work as the phone can also be remotely re-activated. The GPS is used for the location determination and the mike can be enabled to allow to listening. I believe this can also be done without making anything show up on the display...

[Peter]

You maybe lucky and have your faculties until you leave this earth, we all forget things from time to time. Some people never get Alzheimer’s and maybe a cure or block will be devloped preventing the desease soon. How many relative want support you in your old age some expect the state to do it and leave you locked away.

[Gordon]

We could update Hitler's idea of tattooing a number on our arms - why don't we barcode everyone?

[josh]

what a load of rubbish. Shows how downhill the Times has gone recently...

I would advise you to watch the film "Taking Liberties" which will soon put you off this ridiculous idea...

Get real

[Gerard Mulholland]

kathz wrote on28 Dec at 11:36:00 "We can start by tagging the Prime Minister and members of his cabinet and tracking their movements with CCTV."
Best idea yet!
Let them lead from the front for a change.
Rupert Murdoch'll approve. If John Prescott and Cecil Parkinson had been tagged, Rupert would have had their saucy office goings-on all over The Sun the very next day!
Good one, kathz. As nick suggests on 28 Dec at 19:55:11, try a Downing Street Petition. I'll sign!
Can you add the Royals into that as well?

[Jackie]

This is the old question of the priority of a concept of 'freedom' over safety, and where the line is drawn. A politicial friend of mine once told me that there is no such thing as total freedom because the freedom of one man trespasses on the freedom of another. My instinctive reaction is always I would rather be alive with some curtailment of freedom than totally free and dead. And if that means someone tagging me in my dotage, so be it.

[illdog]

The wheels are already in motion for us all to be tagged with embedded RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification). Not unlike the the type used for keeping your dog found.

Under the guise of safety, security and convenience were slowly being lulled into the idea that it's all good to have someone know where you are 24/7/365.

My only problem is who that someone might be and can they be trusted to use this tool only for our benefit...

[nick]

Kathz - fantastic idea - where do I find the petition to sign?

On a more general (and perhaps more serious) note, we are constantly told that we are the most spied upon country in the world. We have more CCTV cameras than anywhere else yet no-one seems to feel much safer as a result. Even a casual glance at the CCTV footage shown on crimewatch (presumably after the BBC's technical wizards have worked on it) shows how ridiculous it is to rely on this technology. The quality is frankly laughable, most mobile phones produce better quality video, the chances of anyone being recognised from CCTV must be minute. I have one over my front door (a free gift and admittedly cheap and cheerful) which I gave up using after failing to recognise my 17 yo son on it.

Tagging children is of course a non-starter - I know what my reaction would have been when I was younger, the tag would have been on a train to scotland within minutes, or my friends and I would have swapped them between ourselves, lost them, tried to blow them up with fireworks etc.

Tagging alzheimer's sufferers might be more practical but is all too likely to be taken as a way of getting out of real personal involvement and commitment to one's elderly relatives.

[dr venables preller]

The merits of this idea are unfortunately outnumbered by the possible liberty infringements from creative use of the technology.

It would be a simple matter to exclude individuals from any location, draw attention to them or control their activities by linking other databases. Perhaps those with a history of being tired and emotional might be refused entry to licensed premises or be subject to order limits, those with late returns form be banned from libraries, or the obese be denied helpings of fried potato.

The risk would be that freedoms might even be lost as a result of unidentified system error.

More likely would be the emergence of workarounds, such as chip duplication, enabling the energetic with or without associates to be in two places at once.

May one suggest the expression 'ghost riding the chip' be reserved for such system abuse?

[Candadai Tirumalai]

I do not know if Alzheimer's is more frequent now than in the past or if it was then "tagged" as senility or that people generally did not live long enough for it to take hold but some of the contemporary instances I have read about are heart-breaking.

[abc]

Very valid point. Then we would all know about people jumping off art galleries.

[kathz]

We can start by tagging the Prime Minister and members of his cabinet and tracking their movements with CCTV. Dedicated internet TV channes could keep us in touch with their activities.

To use some of their favourite arguments and cliches, this will

- restore trust in public life
- be an imaginative initiative - encourage politicians to re-engage with the electorate
- show a real concern with transparency and openness

After all, as politicians frequently tell us, if they've nothing to hide they will have nothing to fear.

[Roger]

Do you carry a mobile phone? If you do, you are already tagged. You location is known and where you have been for the past year is recorded.