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You can also use Talk Origins, Talk Reason, Talk Design, EvoWiki and Panda's Thumb to find lots of info on why these people are wrong. If you want to donate money, donate it to the NCSE or Talk.Origins, or perhaps buy some of the books of creationism refuters - I'd reccomend Robert Pennock's book 'Tower of Babel' as quite a good introduction.

Even my lowly blog has a few things on the ID/creationism debacle.

I did write up the current Pope's view of the evolution/creation situation in a blog entry recently. I found it, quite by accident, in a creationist book I picked up. Ratzinger is quite a bit more hardline than JP II on this issue, though not too explicit about it.

Do join up. I'd quite like to see meetup.com burn for charging these ridiculous sums.

1. Somebody is taking my money and forcing me to carry a card. I would prefer it if they asked me whether I wanted to pay for a card, and offered me one at a reasonable price. Stealing my money to pay for something I don't want is theft.

2. I don't trust the government. Look at the railways, education system, health care system, roads, buses, social services, police, court system etc. It's all a gigantic fuck up. I don't want to carry a piece of plastic representing that enormous fuck up in my wallet.

3. Because there are security concerns. In Britain currently, there are about four pieces of ID you get. Firstly, an NHS card. This entitles you access to being registered on a doctor's rolls. You carry the card in, fill in a chunk of it, hand it to your doctor and they put you on their rolls. Now, if you are a relatively healthy 19-year-old, you can plonk your NHS card out of sight. I keep mine in a little box by the telephone. If I need to go to the doctor, I'll hunt it out. But, under this new scheme I will have to carry it around with me. If the card gets stolen, and I suddenly need to go to hospital, it will be an inconvenience. Wheras, under the current system, if I need to go to hospital, I know exactly where the card is. Similarly with driving licences. The current paper ones, you can put in a little box and keep them out of sight. As for the photocard, well, you can keep it with it, or you can carry it with you. I carry mine with me, but that's mostly because I'm a Learner driver. Once (if) I pass my test, I will probably leave it at home, since you are generally given seven days to present it to the police if questioned. With the seperate identity system, it provides a check against crime. If somebody steals the one ID card, then you are ID-less and unable to prove who you are. If somebody steals just one element of your different IDs - say, they get your credit card, but not your driving licence or they get your passport but not your NHS card - you still have a method to prove who you are in order to get your other ID card cancelled. You can still show your driving licence if your passport gets stolen. Sure, you won't be able to go abroad. But it'll be useful in order to prove to the Passports people that you are who you say you are.

4. A while back Blair stated that the cards will not infringe civil liberties but will also be effective against crime. My response: you can't have your cake and eat it. Either it will infringe civil liberties and be effective against crime or it will not infringe civil liberties and will not be effective against crime. If the latter is true, why on earth are we going to pay for it? If the former is true, then I object on the grounds of infringing civil liberties.

5. There is no evidence that they will do anything useful. We've had lots of spin and rhetoric (typical), but no evidence that these cards will aid in any crime fighting whether it's terrorism or drugs or money laundering or petty crime or identity theft or illegal immigration. The onus is on the government to prove that these cards will be useful. So far they haven't done so.

6. One should double or triple the projected price of the thing. The government says it's going to be £70. Double it. That's how much it's REALLY going to cost. If not a lot more. Hidden costs and all.

7. Currently the government's power is limited by the fact that it is split up in to numerous agencies. The health department can only deal with hospitals, and your interaction with them is kept completely seperate from the IR (inland revenue) organisation or from the schools system or whatever. This scheme will merge all the various organisational identity databases together. Suddenly, the health department could theoretically peer in to your tax records or the social security department could be looking at your kids' school record. That will create loads of opportunity for fraud and so on.

8. During the consultation, a large amount of sub

Insert a clever reference about the difference between oblique and purposive intent

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