More on ID cards

With a bit of luck, the road to the new "entitlement" cards will be less than smooth. Thanks to Owen Blacker for these two:

• Those 5,000 no votes aren't staying buried
• One of the proposed functions of ID cards is to outlaw "fictitious" names. But what's the difference between a fictitious name and a real one? From Owen:

  An interesting post to UK Crypto last week on multiple "real name"s. Bear in mind that English Common Law (and Scots, iirc) allows us all to use the name of our choosing in any context. If I wish to be known as Simon Davies, for example, in the context of political debate, there is nothing (in theory) that could stop me from doing so. My "real name" is any name by which a non-trivial group of people know me.

  Another example would be my sister. Her birth certificate reads "Amy Catrin Blacker", but she is uniformly known as Catrin or Cati (traditional Welsh forms of Catherine and Cathy, respectively). She uses those three identities variously, as well as Mrs C Gronow and Mrs AC Gronow, in various circumstances (Gronow being the name of her now-ex-husband). When she remarries next year, she'll doubtless add one or two more "real names" to her collection.