Where Mrs T should be buried

For lovers of traditional joke forms, I would like to start this column with a traditional gag. "What's the difference between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher?" Answer: "A couple of weeks, if we're lucky." Margaret Thatcher has always seen herself as an uber-patriot, and so I feel, after we lost our match against France in the Euro 2004 championships, that the least she could do for England is die.

Few care about how she goes, though some poetic irony - such as falling down a disused mineshaft - would be nice. It is her send-off that is of concern. If there were any justice in the world, her funeral would take place in the Falklands. The military should take her coffin down to the beach, launch it into the sea and then torpedo it. Admittedly, she hasn't publicly requested such a funeral, but I feel instinctively that it's what she would want.

In reality, we will have a huge state funeral with the press lionising her as a great leader and, just as it has with Reagan, airbrushing out the awkward facts: Reagan's administration trained and armed the mujahedin in Afghanistan, the contras in Nicaragua and sold arms to America's public enemy number one - Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.

From our side of the Atlantic, Thatcher's administration armed Saddam Hussein and Augusto Pinochet, and oversaw a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland.

It is no surprise that George Bush and Tony Blair admire their predecessors so much - they have continued the policy of judging others' human rights abuses selectively, while ignoring their own. In this "war against terror", there is only one rule: the terrorists are the ones you can't do business with.

Both Bush and Blair support the most undemocratic of regimes, so long as they are "business-friendly". From Colombia to Indonesia, and from Saudi Arabia to China, the US and UK have armed and assisted torturers and murderers. None more so than Turkey, which has consistently used British-supplied weapons against the Kurds, to deadly effect . . . Sound familiar to anyone? Britain has helped kill so many Kurds that you would be forgiven for thinking that Blair probably regards it as a Turkish "country sport" and, once fox-hunting is banned, might even allow it here.

In 1994 Layla Zana, a democratically elected MP for the pro-Kurdish DEP party, was charged with the crime of wearing a headband of the Kurdish colours (red, yellow and green) and speaking part of her oath of allegiance to parliament in Kurdish. For this, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison - an offence and punishment of which not even the illegitimate offspring of David Blunkett and Saddam could dream.

In 1995, after years of allowing arms sales to the regime, Europe awarded Layla Zana the Sakharov peace prize, given to people imprisoned in the cause of peace. It is an odd sort of honour because, to win it, you really do have to be totally up shit creek. In 2001, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Zana had not had a fair trial and recommended her release. On 9 June 2004, Turkey decided to free her and then had the audacity to suggest that this was a milestone in Turkey's reform process.

The repression of the Kurds continues - and once again, it is happening with British and American help.

Kongra-Gel (the Kurdistan People's Congress) was formed in 2002 to work democratically and non-violently for the rights of all Kurdish people. On 24 March this year, Gordon Brown, in a press statement primarily relating to Hamas, announced that the UK would freeze Kongra-Gel's assets, as it was a terrorist organisation.

When Brown made his decision, had Kongra-Gel committed any terrorist act? No. Was Kongra-Gel supporting a five-year ceasefire by Kurdish armed rebels? Yes. Was Kongra-Gel consistently calling for democratic reforms? Yes.

Labour decided to label this organisation as "terrorist" for two simple reasons. First, the Bush administration had done it. Second, Turkey, which is next door to the destabilised and insurgent Iraq, and has vital oil interests, is a friend - and Turkey wanted it. With Britain, and now the EU, declaring Kongra-Gel to be a terrorist organisation, Turkey can happily continue to persecute Kurds under the guise of fighting terror.

However, there is something that you, dear reader, can do to help the Kurds. While a case appealing against the EU ban on the organisation is being prepared for the European Court of Justice, Kongra-Gel is asking people to join it if they want to work for peace and justice.

If thousands of us do this, it will be extremely hard to enforce a ban, when Kongra-Gel might well have a higher membership than the Tory party. Unlike Labour, you won't get a membership card when you join, but at least Kongra-Gel will never invade Iraq.

For information on joining Kongra-Gel, e-mail: estella24@tiscali.co.uk.

Why ID cards won't deter terrorists

David Blunkett is a kind, gentle, soft, petal-stroking, happy cuddly bear of a man... Admittedly these are all lies, but I reckon this is the description most likely to annoy him - and it does seem pointless writing about him if I can't attempt to piss him off.

It has been suggested that all Home Secretaries become more draconian than their predecessor. If that is the case, then it is fair to say that Blunkett has skipped a few generations, as the logical progression should go: Michael Howard, Jack Straw, then Ming the Merciless, followed by Alf Garnett, Paul Dacre and Torquemada, before handing the baton to Blunkett. When it comes to being a bastard, David really has put in the hours. Whoever takes over from him can afford to put their feet up for a while.

There is, however, a glimmer of hope on the horizon: that Blunkett might have overreached himself.

Thirty-eight MPs signed up to the recent early day motion calling for greater transparency in the methods employed by opinion pollsters. They might consider the YouGov poll, commissioned by Privacy International and published last month. The poll is the first to show that support for ID cards is falling.

In April, the government, basing its facts on a MORI poll, said 80 per cent of Britons were in favour of compulsory cards. And to quote Blunkett: "Anyone against is a liberal, Bin Laden-loving nonce and a Hampstead sodomite."*

In the YouGov poll, 61 per cent were in favour with 38 per cent against, indicating either that the more aware people become of the detail of ID cards, the more opposed they are to them; or that a mass migration of al-Qaeda supporters indulging in anal love will shortly reduce Hampstead Heath to standing room only.

There could be another explanation, though. The April MORI poll was commissioned by Detica, which calls itself the leading UK IT consultancy and boasts a client list including the UK military, police, security services and government. You can pretty much guarantee that Detica will make a bid for some of the ID card work. If it doesn't, I will eat my, or my Hampstead neighbour's, hat. So cynics might say Detica has a vested interest in commissioning an expensive poll that shows 80 per cent of the public backing the scheme. Those who are even more cynical, if that were possible, might point to the fact that its analysis of the poll did not say if this support was for compulsory or voluntary ID cards - or, indeed, if that distinction was made in the questions.

By contrast, the YouGov poll asked questions about the detail of the bill. Was it fair that, upon registering for an ID, people have to inform the government of any changes to their address and that failure to do so would result in a £1,000 fine? Forty-seven per cent said not fair; 41 per cent said yes.

Reading about the 38 per cent opposed to the card will give Blunkett cause for concern. Almost a quarter of the opposition say they are prepared to demonstrate against the card, which would translate nationally into five million people marching in protest. Sixteen per cent said they would engage in civil disobedience and 6 per cent said they would go to prison. This would mean more than a million people are prepared to be locked up for opposing the card.

Some pundits are comparing it to the beginning of the poll tax revolt, although obviously all of this will be making David Blunkett dance around his office, gleefully muttering: "A million more people in prison! Result!"

Opposition to the cards is growing for the very simple reason that no one has explained properly why we need them. The arguments have been lumped together in the general hogwash about fighting terror - "One-third of terrorists travel using multiple identities," cry the card's supporters. But they then fail to mention that two-thirds do not, because they use their own identities, and these people would have an ID card. For an ID card to stop terrorism, all terrorists would need to register for one, something they might not do - they are, after all, terrorists. They kill people and blow up buildings and getting an ID card is probably the last item on their list of things to do. 1) Get Semtex. 2) Take flying lessons. 3) Get ID card.

Besides, the information needs to be correct. With terrorists, there is always the possibility that they might fib. Or even get a fake ID. Then the state needs to get the information that the holder of the card is involved in terrorism, which also needs to be factually correct. This information has to match that on the card, and the cardholder must be located and caught.

May I suggest that the easier way to stop terrorism is to stop illegally invading countries, occupying them and killing their citizens?

* Please allow for a margin of error in the factual content . . . But not much.