No verifiable details

I wanted to get a pension forecast from the Government. It used to be that you stuck in your National Insurance number and out the forecast popped. But now you have to verify your identity, online. This was an interesting, though ultimately fruitless waste of a few hours with neither the Government nor the Post Office happy I was who I said I was.

 

I’d offered my driving licence, recent P60, debit card details, and national insurance number. I’d offered my address, email, mobile phone number, and mug-shot. Still, they would not oblige. Did I have a passport? No, mine expired years ago. No matter, what will really do the trick are those records of credit history held on file by the mysterious credit ratings agencies.

 

Well, that’s fine, except I’ve never had a credit card, or a mobile phone contract. I’ve never paid HP for my car, television, fridge etc. But without that credit history, one is only part way towards a verifiable identity.  I’ve always suspected my credit history was a problem – I mean the fact I don’t have one. So far as I know, it’s not against the law not to have one, not against the law not to have a credit card. It’s a personal choice, but it also makes you something of a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.

 

The use of credit exploded in the nineties as a result of wage stagnation. It enabled us to maintain the illusion of a shiny consumer lifestyle in the face of a chronic economic downturn that was not and will never be fixed. Can’t afford that nice car? No problem, £300 a month and it’s yours.  I appreciate the world’s entire economy is based on debt, that indeed debt is how money is created in the first place. I don’t understand how that works so, to whatever extent it is possible, I prefer not to partake of it for fear of accidents.

 

My approach is called Granny Economics, at least according to one smarmy economics lecturer I encountered, around the time of that credit explosion.  But I’ve stuck with Granny Economics. One of the lessons of the depression of the 1920’s, that my grandma lived through, is there’s always a risk your debts will drag you under. Plus, when you work it out, you’re paying twice the price for something on tick than if you paid for it up front. Sure I can see the advantage for the guy who collects on that debt, but I am not that guy. I’m just trying to manage my finances as best I can within the bounds of my means, and my competence.

 

So the question is, who am I? Do I even exist? Well, it depends on who you ask.

 

A while ago, the cameras on the Dartford bridge decided I’d driven over it and not paid the toll. They were sure they knew who I was from a computer’s scan of a car registration plate. The same computer posted out the fine. The fact I live three hundred miles away, that the photograph of the miscreant vehicle was clearly not my car, that the computer could not tell the difference between a “V” and a “Y” on a number plate, cut no mustard. Indeed, the help-line guy was rude, and perfectly assured he (or rather his computer) knew who I was.

 

“It was clearly you, sir.”

 

Thus, we have a sense of the world forming itself into the image of a machine. It’s not a particularly smart machine either, and lacks the discrimination of a human being who can easily tell the difference between a “Y” and a “V”, and if not, they can be persuaded to admit to the possibility of a mistake. But if you don’t fit the narrow mechanistic parameters defining “identity”, you’re going to have a hard job accessing any of the services afforded by your membership of this increasingly Kafkaesque society, whose foundation is a system that admits to no error, yet makes errors all the time.

 

I’ll manage without my pension forecast for now, thanks, Mr Gov.uk. I won’t be drawing it for some years yet, and can guestimate it pretty well for my present purposes. I suppose I could try to renew my passport and thereby try to convince you of my identity that way – though I would rather spare myself the expense, since it’s unlikely I will be needing it for travel any time soon. Plus already I am imagining the bureaucracy it might involve. Will you, for example, want details of the passport I have not got? As for obtaining a credit card, I mean, so I can start racking up an identifiable trail of serviceable debt to verify my existence that way, well, without any credit history to begin with, I can forget that, can’t I?

 

The conclusion I draw from all of this is, while I clearly exist to myself, the machinery of the state remains unconvinced.  Is that a bad thing? We’ll find out in due course, I suppose, like when I come to apply for that state-pension. In the meantime, it’s given me something to write about, and to further ponder the meaning of my existence, when my existence has apparently acquired itself, as yet, no verifiable details.