One of the political footballs being kicked around the media and debate-sphere is the UK National ID Card Scheme. Touted as the answer to reducing Terrorism, to curing minor forms of cancer and improving the National Health Service, this one stop identity card is the political panacea to all things wrong that might be fixed in the country.

Apart from the unjustified claims of crime busting super powers and miraculous health restoring properties of the National ID Card the concern for me, and many others is the lack of success our and other Governments have had in implementing and securing just such information. For a short while the national news read like an interdepartmental competition to see who could loose track of public information in the most spectacular fashion possible.

Rather than join in the Armchair quarterbacking of punditry so relevant to being a blogger I would like to propose a solution to this and other concerns.

The New TESCO National ID Club Card would provide you with more than reward points  for shopping in TESCO. It would deliver a  mechanism with which loyalty points may be gained  simply by shopping British.

In place of tax rebates and complex form filling and long queues waiting for the health service to provide, well a service, you would now be offered a 1.5% cash back for booking a health holiday in Prague that included two nights stay in a Prague Hospital plus city tour.

The TESCO club card system is already in place, there’s little need to create a whole new system to track and identify people. They only need to add a tick box:

Are you a UK Citizen ? :

After this you could walk down to TESCO customer services and show them your Passport and your Fingerprints and all would be done. There’s no need to roll out new cards or new databases. The whole process and implementation is already sponsored and delivered by TESCO where “Every little helps”.

There would be  an additional benefit in profiling of terrorists. In place of all this tricky due process, investigation and evidence based detective work we could simply look at spending habits. Anyone suddenly cancelling their life insurance policy, booking a few train tickets and purchasing a large rucksack could be called in for questioning. If we round up the wrong people, well that’s okay we can send them down to customer services for some complimentary gift tokens.   Stop and Search takes on a whole new meaning when the constable asks you “Do you have a Club Card?”. You might even get points for co-operating with the police in their line of investigations.

So there we have it. A simple idea which resolves the cost, the delivery, the management and the security whilst utilising a tried and trusted brand. I hope you all approve of this idea and give it your full consideration.

Thanks for reading and “Do you have a Club Card?”