Free travel

Very shortly, I'll get the privilege of free bus travel anywhere in Scotland, because I'm disabled:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Rele...06/03/15100131

This will give me opportunities to visit my Mum (who is in care, but in a world of her own, after a series of small strokes a few years back), but I do have the suspicion that the "Entitlement Card" could have other implications, in that it could easily be a National ID card by the back door. It looks good, but.............

Snorri

The card arrived in today's post, bearing a copy of the awful photo that was on my old (local only) bus pass. No sign of a chip on it, but it has a personalised serial number. Paperwork included states that eventually, it will be linked to my NHS number and associated records. Please forgive me for being thick, but I don't see what need there is for a bus company to have a link to my medical records! If I wasn't disabled, I wouldn't have been issued with the card, which is all they NEED to know. My doctor knows me and my medical history / condition, so he doesn't need a card to find my records.

Obviously, I'm grateful for the concessionary travel (I might even be able to use it, some day), but I'm a bit suspicious about the other possibilities. It already proves my identity (there's no denying the frightful fizzog on the photo ). The only advantage over the proposed national ID card is that this one was free (no biometrics, though).

Ah well, may as well add it to the other pile of plastic cards that I lug around with me.

At least the ferry vouchers that came with it may have a use some day.

Snorri
:smt102

Hi snorri,

maybe there are a glut of ex international spies in the nether regions of the uk?
Maybe the card is a way of tracking travel movements?
Maybe i just read too many conspiracy theories? :smt048

Hmmmm, it smacks a little of Big Brother (the book, not the crap TV show). If this card has to be used to take up any entitlement (as it will, eventually), you can be tracked anywhere from the local library to the London tube system!

And is Orkney a "nether region"? Granted, it can be an a******e of a place in winter, but it's prettier then the southern end of a north-facing Border Collie!

Snorri