ID CARDS

I may be wrong, but my impression is that the great majority of British people living in Spain were always happy to carry a Spanish residencia ID card and now complain because they have lost the right to have one.

If these same people were to return to live in Britain would they be among those celebrating the Lib-Con government's decision to scrap the UK's national identity card scheme? Is life in Spain so very different from life in today's Britain that an ID card is necessary and helpful in one but not in the other?

The saving from scrapping the UK scheme (ignoring the wasted investment already made) is obviously appealing to a government wanting to reduce the national deficit but somehow one does not get the impression that money is the principal motivation.

Any kind of official identification seems to be anathema to the average British citizen and enables the Home Secretary, Teresa May, to talk about “reducing the control of the state over decent, law-abiding people and hand power back to them.” What power? In what way are “decent, law-abiding people” affected negatively by a card which would make life more difficult for “rotten. criminal people” and thereby improve the quality of life for everybody?

One might have thought that growing security risks of all kinds would reinforce that point. But no.
There's something I can't understand here. Can someone explain it to me?