Saturday, July 15, 2006

The UK Customer Loyalty Card - an idea whose time has come


Immediately after posting that last ramble, I found myself pondering upon a throw-away line I included about a National Loyalty Card.

It’s actually not a bad idea

After all, what would the take-up for supermarket loyalty cards be if they were marketed in the same way that the National ID Card has been?

The National ID Card concept is currently all stick and no carrot.

Instead, how about some special offers on welfare benefits, bonus points for respectful behaviour, being bothered to vote or denouncing a Muslim, a quarterly mailing of tailored public service discount vouchers based on database records of your lifestyle, VIP lounges in prisons and hospitals for ‘frequent fliers’ and free to enter competitions with dream holiday prizes?

Properly executed, a mould-breaking concept like that could change the very nature of citizenship

It’s a bloody winner I tell you

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And off the back of that line of thought, a few minutes Googling yielded a couple of amusing links:

  • A great big stack of sites selling disturbingly authentic-looking fake ID cards. Of the sites I looked at, this one was the best/ worst. University of West Wales anyone?



3 comments:

Kier said...

It is, quite possibly, the most excellent idea ever.

Elaborating on this, would you lose points every time you did something 'disloyal', like question government reports?

I mean, this is not strictly loyal, is it, if loyalty is to the 'UK Establishment' rather than the 'UK Citizenship'? And I do often get the impression I'm being naughty. I think quite a few of us would be losing points now if such a system was in place - it would certainly sort the 'sheep' from the 'goats'! (I have never used that expression in my life until now, where it seems appropriate in a kind of Orwellian way)

Best wishes,

Kier

Anonymous said...

Football caption competition ... "I'm not being bribed as much as you so: not the face."

Stef said...

lol at the captions...