Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

Cartoon about the stand Conservative MP David Davis is taking on resigning his seat in the house of commons and refighting a by-election at Haltemprice and Howden. This cartoon made for campaign group No2ID.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The government has announced one of its periodic relaunches of the National Identity card scheme. I would urge anyone who is interested in this debate to visit NO2ID's website to learn more about what this scheme actually involves for you. The drawing above is a take-off of John Tenniel’s original image. Tenniel famously illustrated Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books. (Every cartoonist has to have a go at this image, it's in the rules somewhere...)

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

New drawing for No2ID. There is an link to a leaked document from the government here. It is interesting to track the way in which the non-compulsory ID cards will become compulsory for the younger members of our society. Link from Anorak. The BBC pen profile of No2ID is here. No2id themselves live here and there is a handy guide to directions to your local interview centre for your very own card here.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The news that HM Revenue and Customs have managed to loose rather a lot of customer details on a pair of computer discs. It doesn't breed great confidence for national ID cards does it? Expect reassurances that the system will be changed to ensure that this sort of thing can never happen again...

20th November 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Will you stand up, not to be counted? No to identity cards. Why are so many people worried about having their name on a list owned by the government? Well, you could read this and then have a think about it. The clause about us being responsible for the accuracy of all the information collected is particularly interesting, because if it isn't correct, and we all know how reliable large databases and call-centres are, we'll be individually liable for £1,000 fines. And get this, we don't even have a choice about signing up, at least, not if we want a working UK passport. A bit further down the road on which the government plans to take us, signing up, will become compulsory for everyone over the age of 16.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

A short nugget of information from Mr Chicken Yogurt which relates to the cartoon below. This image was drawn for No2id.



When you visit the link, you will discover a story from The Independent, about record-keeping and its problems. It is the simple observation that humans are not very good at keeping them. Then let yourself think about the scale of the task which the government is setting for itself in recording intimate details for all of us who live and move in and out of the UK. Remember too, the problems the government had when attempting to record a single simple fact, exactly who lived where, for the Community Charge (or Poll Tax.) Then see the record keeping disaster which is heading our way if the ID card project goes ahead. And bad records mean legal and administrative mistakes about you and me.

There's an elegant review at the Nether-World blog of Taking Liberties, a new film about some very serious changes the government have made in UK law. These effect every person in the country, negatively in my opinion. Unfortunately, the film, unlike the laws, is a very limited release but hopefully it will soon be due for a DVD release.

The drawing was recently commissioned by Computing newspaper.

A new drawing for campaign group No2ID.

In among all the excitement yesterday, the government chose to release a long-delayed set of figures on the start-up costs for ID cards. There has been a fair bit of coverage of this, which is great because the figures are hair-raising - and these costs do not include little delights like the millions and millions of scanners which will be required acoss the country to make the system 'function.' The Home Office eestimates carefully 'divides' the project costs down into seperate areas, claims them as unrelated and in this way disperses the bill.

You can download the Home Office's artful report here - or get a fisking of it here.

The government is in a muddle about how to hold our personal data for the soon-to-arrive compulsory ID cards. This week, the Prime Minister's solution is to link all of our existing national records databases to provide a single unified one.

After all, sharing always makes things easier doesn't it? Well, tell that to the unicyling white elephants.

The link below, explains why Tony's latest brilliant idea for his legacy isn't either logical or safe for the rest of us.

Why not