Jacqui Smith: ID Cards Are Safe And Well, Ha! Ha! Ha!
In the wonderful and wacky world of surreal politics which is the happy hunting ground of New Labour, there is never a dead horse which cannot stand yet more flogging.
Jacqui Smith is trotting out the usual stuff and nonsense to what must be a very bored or very credulous audience at the Demos think tank, although there is precious little to indicate actual thought happening, just the normal dirge-like repitition of a tired and discredited mantra as New Labour treads water before its forthcoming electoral defeat.
Read the full text of the snake-oil saleswoman’s patter over here.
Bottler Brown Drops UK ID Cards
Does anyone still remember “Capability” Brown? No, he was another incarnation of the slippery Brown personae, which includes “Prudence” Brown and “Gormless” Gordon.
Now, it seems, Gordon Brown knows that the introduction of compulsory ID cards would be the equivalent of writing his own political suicide note, so he his hoping to lose them down the back of the sofa, along with the data of every man, woman and child of New Britain.
The problem is that he cannot be seen to be abandoning the scheme, as that would make him look weak, vacillating, incompetent and not even possessing a loose grasp of events.
It would also be a bit of a problem telling all the companies which are banking on making a killing on the back of UK taxpayers and might mean that the revolving door for those who want to get sinecures in IT business when they are voted out of office could get jammed.
The Guardian has this:
A compulsory identity card system for British citizens looks as if it will be deferred beyond the next election, according to documents leaked to the Conservatives.
As recently as December the Home Office said the ID card system for UK citizens would be phased-in on a voluntary basis from 2009, but a national identity strategy paper, marked restricted, clearly shows the UK-citizens phase of the scheme will now not start until 2012. A voluntary scheme is due be introduced for those renewing passports from 2009.
Gordon Brown has appeared evasive in recent weeks as to whether he supports a compulsory identity card scheme for British citizens, saying it is a matter for parliament to decide in a future vote.
On BBC News:
Whatever ministers say about their support for the principle of ID cards, this is one idea whose time looks increasingly to have gone.
The leaked papers suggesting the crunch introduction of cards for Britons might be kicked into the post-election long grass may be the clearest indication of that, but it is certainly not the first.
There have been regular claims in parliament and the media that Gordon Brown is less than committed to the policy, and certainly less so than his predecessor, Tony Blair, whose brainchild it was. [...]
On the existing timetable, there was the real prospect that the issue would erupt just at general election time, with the possibility of a campaign of civil disobedience, with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg already pledged to join such a move.
So, if the leaked documents are accurate - and there is every indication they are - the process of making the issue less of an election pressure point may have started.
Downing Street insists that “nothing has changed” but it seems Labour could be moving towards going into the next election saying they will see how ID cards work for foreign nationals, before deciding whether/when to extend them to Britons if all goes well.
As a thought on this, the idea of Tony Blair’s brain having a child is rightly repugnant. Fortunately, there has never been any evidence that he has a functioning brain, so the chances of it having a child are slim.
As for the “possibility of a campaign of civil disobedience” if ID cards are made compulsory, it would probably be safer to mark that one down as an absolute cast-iron, copper-bottomed certainty.
In The Independent:
The identity card scheme was said to be in “intensive care” as leaked Whitehall documents showed it faced a new delay of two years.
The cards were set to be issued to Britons from 2010, when they apply to renew their passports, but private Home Office documents show the introduction is set to be put off until 2012.
The likely postponement follows a series of fiascos over the security of personal data held by the Government. Gordon Brown is also widely believed not to share the enthusiasm of his predecessor for the scheme.
Nobody in government needs to carry an ID card in order to be identified as a mendacious, lickspittle, moneygrubbing buffoon.
However, maybe Tony Blair will still have the last laugh. When he becomes Emperor of Europe, perhaps he will force us all to have ID cards, even if Gordon Brown no longer wants them.
Of course, the fact that Gordon Brown is preventing a referendum on Europe means that the public cannot protect him from his old boss and possible future nemesis.
Yet Another UK Data Loss Scandal
Just so the Ministry of Defence should not feel alone in its embarrassment at losing the details of a mere 600 000 people from a stolen laptop, some government department has decided to simply dump the physical paper records of thousands of benefits claimants on a roundabout.
BBC News:
Hundreds of documents containing sensitive personal data have been found dumped on a roundabout in Devon.
Details of benefit claims, passport photocopies and mortgage payments were included in the confidential data.
The documents were found on Thursday at a roundabout near Exeter Airport by Karl-Heinz Korzenietz, from Dawlish. [...]
Mr Korzenietz said two months earlier he found similar documents to those found in Exeter. The Department of Work and Pensions said it was urgently looking into the matter.
“When I came from Exeter Airport, I discovered lots of papers on the roundabout,” Mr Korzenietz told BBC News.
“I thought first of all it was rubbish. But when I looked at the papers I discovered they were highly sensitive.
“I was shocked and surprised that sensitive papers like this would just be lost like that.”
It is actually no surprise at all. People who work for government departments which pay out money to claimants of any kind are routinely taught to think of those claimants as scum and told to withhold the money in any way they can.
It is hardly a conceptual leap from thinking of other people as leeches to treating their records with utter contempt.
This was illustrated by the way farmers were treated with regard to payments of subsidies to which they were entitled, but which the department had utterly screwed up through its own idiotic incompetence.
The biggest burden on the UK taxpayer are the legions of pen-pushers and paper-shufflers who are supposed to administer the systems and machinery of the establishment, but who could not even pick their own noses without using a mirror and a piece of string.
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