Or indeed in one notable case the person who was arrested for a T-Shirt about "Plasticine action"

Is there any chance England might too?

So far my BankID boycott is over a year old, and my resolve grows as I read more of the news.

Implementing those requirements didn't depend on there being a digital ID system. Instead we have a hodge podge of bad requirements (like "wet" signatures on specific documents, using of non-UK based private providers etc).

Implementing a digital ID system could reduce inequalities (for example, people who don't have passports and driver's licenses have more difficulties in some circumstances) and also reduce dependencies on non-UK orgs who may not do that well with privacy.

That's not to say there aren't risks of course, but other European countries seem to have managed to implement these systems without becoming totalitarian police states :)

This has been a slow 111 year project. See the opening of A. J. P. Taylor's English History 1914–1945:

> Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so.

> All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman’s food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the second World War was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.

What's the alternative? Not do anything and hope things change by themselves? Has that worked in the past? Is doing something than better nothing?

This is some very impressive politicking and exactly why many people don't trust the mainstream political parties.

Digital IDs would also be de facto mandatory for the majority of adult residents based on what they would be required for despite the government very clumsily saying otherwise.

The government is simply being dishonest here so that should arouse suspicion...

In particular, there is no major political party in the UK that supports trans rights, which is devastating to that community there.

(On the plus side, so far as I can tell, with the Reform party to absorb the true fascists, there are fewer of them in the two major parties in the UK. ...With the downside being that Reform is doing distressingly well these days.)