Fingerprinting and a city centre smoking ban: Birmingham City Council spends your money 2

Fiona McEvoy Grassroots

Today The Stirrer followed up on a story reported there yesterday about children at Birmingham schools having their fingerprints taken in order to eat a school meal. The website became aware of the procedure after being contacted by a parent who felt concerned that this contravened civil liberties.

As is turns out this system is in place at Bournville School, a state-run comprehensive, and is being introduced this coming October at Camp Hill School for Girls, a selective grammar school in the city, and though the term ‘fingerprinting’ has been replaced with "finger-based ID scheme", presumably to avoid any undertones of criminality, one of the stated reasons for introducing this clandestine system is to avoid the theft of the swipe cards used to purchase food at lunch.

So the school has a problem with theft, and the way they choose to address it is by fingerprinting everyone else? Hmmm, familiar. And in the meantime the thieves are still at large, and have themselves only been inconvienienced by having to diversify in what they steal.

Those defending the scheme have said that it will also give schools and parents the opportunity to monitor what youngsters are eating…

Birmingham City Council clearly want to keep the scheme at arms-length, saying that the decision to adopt it is for individual schools and their governing bodies to make, but they’ve hardly shyed away from freedom-eroding measures this week with the Birmingham Mail revealing council plans for the city centre to become ‘smoke free’.

Though there are no official plans for the social pariahs that are smokers to wear cow-bells yet, it has been proposed by the city’s "public protection committee" (in place to save us from ourselves) that the ban on smoking inside public buildings should be extended on to the street in certain ‘zones’ in much the same way as alcohol has been. Councillors now want Government approval in order to trial the zones, with a view to becoming the UK’s first ‘smoke free’ city.

Obviously local bar, pub and restaurant owners are hardly jumping for joy at the prospect of another pronounced slump in their trade, and smokers will be wondering what the next stage of coercion will be.

In truth, the comparisons with alcohol restricted zones are not at all valid. You may not be allowed to knock back alcohol on the public streets, but you are encouraged to do so inside a pub, and obviously the reverse is true with the current smoking ban. If these further proposals were introduced without any sort of ban on the sale of tobacco, residents are looking at an absurd situation where they may buy a packet of cigarettes in a city centre shop but have to smuggle them home to smoke.

Regardless of the endless to-ing and fro-ing over the efficacy of the smoking ban, there are two important issues here. Firstly, that the streets of Birmingham city centre are not under the outright ownership of Birmingham City Council, they were built over generations by and for the people of Birmingham who bought and paid for them with tax pounds, and the city council is in place as a custodian. In this capacity, and bearing in mind the passive effects of smoking are all but dissipated by the outdoor air, their jurisdiction to shoo away law-abiding citizens for choosing to indulge in something they aren’t very keen on should certainly be questioned.

Secondly, taxpayers’ money should spent on those things that make a real difference to local residents’ lives – well-run frontline services and tax cuts. Surely the fingerprinting of innocent children is beyond the mandate of the local authority? Birmingham City Council doesn’t seem to care, and has clearly spent council time and ploughed public money into researching, debating and introducing these intrusive and restrictive measures. Its blind amibition to forge a unique identity for itself as a city means that this won’t be the last we hear of it becoming the UK’s first ‘smoke free city’ either, even if many of the shoo-ees will be paying for the shoo-ers to make the case against them.

Birmingham might endlessly boast of it’s fairly unimpressive oxymoronic "low rise" of 1.9% on council tax, but taxpayers have every right to despair when they learn about such needless, controlling and expensive schemes being mooted at their (considerable) expense.

Fiona McEvoy

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Johnbluk

To introduce any kind of fingerprinting system within our schools, enforced onto our children, is wholly abhorrent. It appears this system could also be easily customised for other uses, such as; to register pupils daily at school; used as evidence to help police investigate petty crimes around the school; check which pupils are going to the toilet too many times, etc. etc. And then, once they leave school, to enrol at other educational facilities and colleges; supply them with NI numbers, etc. etc. Where will the fingerprint analysis stop? And where do the prophecies inspired from George Orwell begin?
On a more sinister note, is this not a very duplicitous way to indoctrinate our children at an early age to collaborate with, and consent to a fingerprint surveillance society? By programming them at such an early age to accept without question, unreasonable requirements for identity checks, and similar, is this not merely an underhanded way to programme young minds to accept the forthcoming surveillance society? If it is – then we should all aide to put a stop to it at once, before it begins !
Consent should be, and must be – 99.9% of the law of this FREE(?) country that prides itself on democracy and personal freedom. In this way, DNA or indeed any bodily samples, (and this also includes fingerprints, palm prints, footprints), are the property of person of the individual, and should be treated as such. In other words, both DNA and fingerprints are the sole property of an individual, and should not be thus treated as free samples for every credit or ID check that comes to pass – and there will be many in the future – if the mindset for this kind of practice is not rectified soon.
No doubt, our UK police force would support this kind of practice, and moreover, would like the DNA and fingerprints of every individual carefully logged and recorded on a national database for future reference – why? Because this simply makes their job a hoot ! No more strenuous mindbending investigations to think about, no more pc plodding and heavy footwork to deal with – just a nice cup of tea, feet up, and check the database – press ENTER.
This goes for ciggie butts as well. No doubt some council special operative will be snooping around outside collecting butt samples into small plastic bags, and trudging back to HQ to swab for DNA and fingerprints, or more than likely chasing up behind you to bag your butt with a fine, and declare it all in the name of personal freedom and public health, (we all know its about the fines and revenues really – Brits are fools, but we are not stupid).
Rich

The smoke free city idea was drawn up by Labour cllrs and dismissed by the ruling Tory-Liberal coalition.
The decision on fingerprinting policy is at the discretion of the individual schools and parents, exactly where it should be – we don’t want central control and should do away with LEA’s and allow individual schools to make their own decisions and choose priorities.
The finger printing scheme could have a beneficial effect on preventing the age old problem of the bully stealing your lunch money, it would take a very determined bully to steal your finger.