Entitlement and numbers [Re: Banking under Enduring Power of Attorney]

[Roland Perry]

In article <49DE566D.7050705@defoam.net>, Adrian Midgley
<amidgley2@defoam.net> writes
>Standing in Laura Ashley recently I fell to thinking about the ideas of
>a national identity card and Laura Ashley's corporate storecard account
>discount system.
>
>It occurred to me that I had never heard the national ID card presented
>as offering any service I actually wanted or which anyone I could see
>wanted or would benefit from - it was all something we were to do for
>someone else's benefit.
>
>And yet, if we have a good token of identity, why should not Laura
>Ashley instead of issuing a card which one's spouse could leave along
>with a collection of other cards and tokens of entitlement at home,
>instead make a note that the holder if ID card number 1 million and 97
>was a member of their sheme and points should accrue and bills be sent
>etc etc.
>
>And so on ...

The original plans for a National ID card (about 10 years ago) was to
hitch a ride on commercial cards, like the Laura Ashley one. The
proposition was that "if Laura Ashley believe who you are, so will HMG".
They waited for such a card to emerge and become a market leader. And
they waited, and waited...

>Thus given an effective national ID card, one should be able to walk out
>of the house wearing and carrying essentially nothing, except for the ID
>card, enter a series of shops in which one had an account and
>demonstrating identity by this one car acquire layers of clothing, lunch
>and a ticket home and find prices diminished by some tiny fraction due
>to the reduction in costs to the sellers.

Isn't that what a Credit Card is?

>But it doesn't seem to have been sold on that basis.  If indeed it has
>been sold.

There were noises earlier this week, about adding ChipnPin to the ID
card.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7986618.stm  which seems to be a
step in the direction you suggest.

        "if [the financial services industry] come forward with a
        compelling view of the rationale for chip-and-pin for [ID
        cards], that's definitely something we'll take extremely
        seriously."

I wonder what their normal uptake is on compelling ideas - although it's
not clear whether such a card could be used to buy things, rather than
piggyback its ChipnPin verification on an existing commercial system
(sounding familiar yet??

Of course, the main drawback of these piggy-back schemes is that if the
citizen falls out with the particular commercial supplier, he also loses
his "ID" - until he imports a different commercial supplier's mantle,
and re-issuing ID cards isn't likely to be either quick or cheap.
-- 
Roland Perry