Recently I wrote about a young woman, who had a driving licence stolen, and presumably as a result of the information therein, criminals not only emptied her accounts at banks, they used her credit card accounts and opened other accounts in her name. This caused me to try to understand how this had come about merely from a driving licence. I came to the conclusion that if a driving licence, with all the latest security checks is unsafe, is an Identity Card such a good thing?
The driving licence holds considerable personal information including a signature. Banks and building societies are overhauling the security of their computer functions, but I suspect the Driving Licence bureaux feel they have not the same responsibility, and are more easily hacked into. People pay for their licences with cheques, and credit cards and this information is, more than likely, recorded as part of the general transaction. Cheques carry quite a bit of information, the bank account, the sort code, the individual’s number, and their signature. The latter will be on file for checking purposes.
If the criminal organisation is large enough, and sophisticated enough, run like a National business, it could easily manufacture new cards, with a picture of the criminal using the card on it, on a National scale. Subsequently, it could be used where an ID was required. To arm themselves with this is clearly simple and enables them to open any number of accounts and have access to the current ones. It must be understood that this is my version of the scenario, arrived at through lateral thinking and basic commonsense. We have arrived at the point where throughout the world vast sums of money are being sidetracked by criminals, and while the banks make good the losses, they are of course transferring those losses to their customers, probably not always in an equable form.
The government, and indeed industry, now talks in billions. I never knew what a billion was until the other day when I calculated , roughly on the basis of £10 per hour, as the average wage of a large proportion of the electorate or an average of about £20,000 pa. A Billion represents all of the average salaries of 50,000 wage earners. When they were talking about that absolute necessity, the Olympic Games, they weren’t talking in one billion they were talking in several, as they are about the train that is going right across London., saving the travellers anything from zero to fifteen minutes. We can wait twenty for a bus.. To pay for all these billions, we are taxed to a very high proportion of our income, more than we are aware of in most cases. A fair proportion of which is squandered through bad management, idiotic projects and specious decisions made against firm advice, the Dome being probably the least..
I know there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, and possibly what I have written above might fall into one of those categories. I just cannot get my mind round the way such vast sums of money are bandied about almost like confetti, and to some extent appeasing one faction to the detriment of the majority. Ask people in the middle of the UK how they feel about the government spending a fortune again in the London area, when the infrastructure throughout the land is below standard, we will be faced with vast sums of money needed to protect our citizens from flooding. If infection, that we previously haven’t experienced, is to be carried by the atmosphere as a result of the tremendous changes taking place in the world as a whole, there will be another bottomless pit for those zillions.
From my biased standpoint, I’m against government by one party with an impregnable majority, which really should be made impossible. In our current situation the power is only in a few hands. The theory is OK if corporate management was what it is intended to mean, management by agreement of the majority, but anyone who has operated in committee will know that there is one voice above all others, or, as in our government system, the Whips control, and the members jump, because they are afraid of being ousted in disfavour and so losing all the kudos and perks which are so dear to them. There have been some recently who resigned rather than being dubbed as sheep, but nothing like the integrity yeas ago – the old school,. with all its faults was more competent, experienced and less precipitate. JUST THINK ABOUT IT!