Yes, you have missed much.

Just to address your airline check in point first, in a previous life I was instrumental in setting up some of the UK’s fist Low Cost Carriers (LCC’s). In the early days the crude revenue management systems of the time priced long dated tickets at for example £1.00, short dated/walk up tickets at say £250.00 and were non transferable. Very quickly, a grey market developed whereby people bought the long dated tickets in bulk to sell to people who wanted to travel immediately or almost immediately at 1,000%+ mark ups. To counter this, the LCC’s stipulated proof of identity in order to protect their pricing mechanisms. This has evolved into photographic ID and passports.

Thus evolved the erroneous supposition that passports or ID cards were a government mandate, a supposition which for obvious reasons the LCC’s were not eager to contradict. To date, no legislative requirement exists for passengers to produce passports at check-in. After 9/11 the government found it convenient that this convention existed and should be perpetuated. In fact, under Schengen it is illegal for intra-European travel for this to be a requirement. For extra EU travel i.e. the United States it is also not a requirement but the carrier will be charged (much to their irritation) by that state for the costs of re-patriating a passenger who is refused entry for passport irregularities, hence the carriers eagerness to ensure all passengers have valid passports.

I have no knowledge of the poster who said the US will require DNA sampling at their borders but the UK home office has a not so covert initiative under way to ensure all UK citizens are on the police DNA profile database. To date, one in twelve of us are, including a seven month old infant.

Going back to your question “what have I missed?” you will see that under EU legislation it is in fact illegal to make you present your passport for intra-EU travel whereas under the new UK legislation the state can prohibit you from travelling freely WITHIN YOUR OWN COUNTRY unless you conform to the edict (which is why a statutory instrument was needed to make this law), thus contradicting one of the basic tenets of British common law and of magna carta dating back to 1215; the freedom of movement unhindered by the state, one of the very definitions of being British. It is this that the New Labour party is systematically overturning and it is changing the definition of what it is to be a free British citizen/subject that the New Labour party is challenging. You have been re-designated as something non-British and it was done to you without parliamentary debate.

In fact, the United States took this basic tenet of (English) common law and enshrined it in their constitution as a fundamental Constitutional right.

Next year there will be a general election. The best way you can act and something they fear most of all would be to tick the box that is NOT New Labour.

Good night and Good Luck.


As a postscript, readers may still think it plausible to monitor travellers on vulnerable public transport such as ships. However, consider this; if the state deems it “not in the public interest” to allow demonstrators to protest as say…the G20 summit they now have the statutory means to do so. An internal border at the M25 perhaps?

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