How do you solve a problem such as "British Citizenship" and how to encourage us all to feel like we're British? Well you force them to stay in school or training until 18, at which point you "encourage" them to swear an oath to the country in one form or another before presenting them with a series of choices whereby the only realistic one is to sign up to a national ID database. From then on you're golden with plenty of opportunities to keep that individual under check and "British", in fact the only thing missing is a microchip for the brain that forces them to stand up and put their hand to their heart every time "God Save the Queen" is heard.

I don't get the obsession with this "feeling British" nonsense, I would have thought we were evolving and developing beyond island borders and could recognise ourselves as people of the world, however these kind of plans aren't about making people feel patriotic as much as they are about trying to force people to care about their community and to stop being such a bunch of shits.

Lord Goldsmith's review isn't all bad and clearly focuses on community cohesion more than "Britishness" but the idea that kids should be encouraged to swear an oath to anyone is absurdly draconian and feels like it is simply reinvigorating a sense of colonialism long after we re-started our more colonial tendencies of invading countries and offering to "help" less developed nations with their problems.

Specifically there are ideas in the report that look at rewarding volunteering, ensuring public concerns are heard by parliamentary committee, and to ensuring that those on benefits aren't put off from actually developing their skills. But for every suggestion like these there's a suggestion such as editing the national anthem or scrapping treason laws that hover somewhere between pointless and hardly ground breaking respectively.

But the idea that no doubt will be picked up on by Tories and Labour is that of the oath, and it sickens me. It sickens me that every child will get put on to a database despite parents wishes for the purposes of speeding up the efficiency of various public services, it sickens me that children that want to leave education after going as far as they feel they can will be forced in to apprenticeships rather than simply being allowed to get on with their life, it sickens me that their rights are then eroded and eroded until they are effectively forced to become the first people on our massively illiberal ID Card system while for some reason then having to pledge an oath to a country that up to that point has cared fuck all about that person's wishes and only about how the country can shape them in to an adequate "citizen" that won't cause any trouble.

So the question will be how will Lord Goldsmith's suggestions be taken? By this government they will no doubt be considered for adoption, and made compulsory by stealth rather than an encouragement by the record of your non-attendance being marked on your ID record so that the police and other services have a constant flag of that person that clearly hates the state flashing wherever you turn up.