So a new card scheme has been issued as a replacement for Bus Passes. I get one because I'm technically classified as disabled. I thought it was odd that the original card one was being phased out with two years' of life left on it but I duly handed in a photo for the ID card (no problem, the last one had one as well to verify it was me using the buss pass) and waited.

A nice new card came back. Not laminated card like the last one but one printed on plastic and my mug printed on it.

What was a bit more disconcerting was the following:

"In time the entitlement card will include your CHI number, which is your unique number for the NHS in scotland. This number, which is already used in the NHS but may not t be familiar to you, helps ensure that NHS staff have access to the information they need to provide you with the best care possible."

To many people this all seems innocuous, useful even, and maybe I'm paranoid but this ties into a much bigger picture which I think many people here will see as being an attempt at putting a kind of ID card in via the back door.

This article here says:

Developed under the first round of the MGF, the Citizen's Account is a standardised and integrated electronic citizen's record to be used across the Scottish public sector. The aim of the Citizen’s Account is to support the provision of a much more personalised service by using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology, to track progress in dealing with service requests and deal instantly with follow-up inquiries, to target services to specific customers, reducing the need for customers to apply for services, and to make possible joined-up service delivery.

What is also interesting is an article from Atos Origin which I recognise as one of the companies that manages doctors' examinations for people on benefits in Dumfriesshire, specifically:

there are three main routes by which entitlement can be taken forward:

* by proceeding with a "stepping-stone" approach, allowing local authority schemes to grow up, for example those being researched in Scotland, South Wales, London, Tyneside and Yorkshire, and perhaps linking them into a national network in the future;
* by taking the "big bang" route and building an entitlement database from scratch and issuing a new entitlement smart card to authenticated applicants;
* by piggy-backing on existing operations such as driving licences and passports to utilise their issuance and authenticating processes while "smartening" the photo card counterpart.

I think I'll microwave this card and or more likely send it back -- the Scottish Executive can then go fuck themselves. They can try to foist an ID card by the back door on me another way.