Here are my top five ideas so far:

• Repeal the Digital Economy Act (see also Coadec’s duplicate idea)
• Abolish the party whips
• Controls on mass surveillance (e.g. ANPR systems)
• Abolish CRB checks
• Repeal the Third Law of Thermodynamics(!) (also, this)

If you’ve spotted any other good ones, please link them in the comments.

Welcome to mylifemyid – the site where 16-25′s can have their say about identity issues in the UK. A few simple things to remember:

• We want to know what you think, so contribute contribute contribute. Don’t be shy.
• You must first register if you want to add your comments* – it takes only a couple of minutes.

Here’s what I think will happen:

• The ASBO generation will be remain more interested in terrorising Daily Mail readers and posting nekkid pictures of each other on Bebo than in ID cards or Government consultations.

• To “further the debate” the Government-appointed website overlords will stuff the website forum with opinions they’ve gathered by persuading school kids to fill out surveys instead of going to double maths. Quite a lot of these will be positive about ID cards. They will also display factual cluelessness and logical immaturity, thus proving they were written by Yoofs.

• The Anti-ID-cards lobby will bombard the forum with their well-rehearsed arguments against the database state. General anti-government people will also take the opportunity to put the boot in. Godwin’s Law will be invoked by the time the post-count reaches double figures.

• The forum will descend into an unholy flame war, or will be completely overwhelmed by organised ID-card objectors, and will be disappeared in favour of a non-interactive “representative sample of youth opinion”. Both sides will claim this as a moral victory and evidence that they are right: the Government will claim ID cards are the bestist ting evar, innit, and will denounce their detractors for scuppering “genuine consultation efforts”; the Anti-ID lobby will accuse the Government of astroturfing, spin, censorship, cynicism, propaganda and farting in a methane-reduction zone.

• The planet will remain spherical, the Pope will not convert to Hinduism, the film will be shown at eleven.

• The treasury will be a few hundred-thousand quid worse off.

Epic, epic fail.

* [yes, really]

The Government’s responses to e-petitions are mostly verbatim echoes of the very positions the signatories were trying to influence. As far as I can tell, no policy has so far been changed as a result of an e-petition. Presumably their hope is that sufficient repetition will win round protesters.

This arrogant “Government knows best” approach makes the whole idea of petitions seem like a pointless exercise. Why bother having a system for people to express their views if you have no intention of taking them into account? Perhaps it’s so the Government can claim it’s “listening to the people”. However soliciting public opinion and then ignoring it does not a consultation make. Why can’t they simply explain the reasons for not taking the action requested by each rejected petition? At least then the public would feel like its voice was being heard.