Alan Johnson is widely reported today making a climbdown on ID cards.
He said the cards will now only be issued to Britons on a voluntary basis meaning no one will ever be forced to have one, effectively paving the way for the scheme to be scrapped altogether.
A pilot scheme for airside workers, which marked the first attempt at making the £4.9 billion programme compulsory for British nationals has been abandoned.
Well, well, well. After all they hype, after the bluster and the lies, finally they hit reality head on. Over priced, unworkable and unnecessary.
Mr Johnson even admitted the suggestion the cards would help combat terrorism was exaggerated as he accepted the Government should never have allowed “the perception to go around that they were a panacea for terrorism”.
Good lord! Should they have not indeed? Well, I never. Has he okayed this with David Blunkett?
Instead, the Home Office is now concentrating on the cards being useful for youngsters to prove their age when going in to pubs.
There are already perfectly good products available for this without giving the government your personal details. And somewhat cheaper, too. As I don’t have this problem, It’s not an issue for me and I have no need to “prove who I am” all the time and on the odd occasion that I might need to produce a utility bill or two, I can live with it.
Of course, they are still making noises about rolling it out – well, they would, wouldn’t they? And, we have to be aware that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Despite Cameron’s promise to stop the project, none of us can be sure that a future government won’t be enticed to sneak in some aspect of this discredited scheme by stealth. It was, after all, the database not the cards themselves that posed the real danger. Let us not forget that. We do at our peril.
Still, it’s nice to see a climbdown. One little victory along the way.
But they will compulsory for foreign workers. So it will go something like:
Plastic plod: Excuse me sir, you like like a foreign worker, can I see your ID card please?
Joe Public: I’m not a foreign worker!
PP: Can you prove it, sir? Perhaps you have an ID card?
How many times will people need to go through this routine before they crack and start carrying an ID card?
.-= ´s last blog ..Why MP’s need a new expenses fiddle law =-.
Good point. On a tangent, there was a news item in the French paper I read regarding English Expats going back to the UK. Apparently, plod are pulling us over because ANPR is picking us up several times over a six month period. They presume, therefore, that we are driving unregistered vehicles – as opposed to the obvious and innocent explanation, that we have returned on more than one occasion during that period. Can we prove that we are driving legally registered foreign vehicles? Looks like I will have to make sure I have that evidence on me…
Different situation, but similar control freakery and mindset.
Will the Tories repeal the need for foreign workers to have ID cards? Hmmm…
I spot a catch 22 here. What you present is an excellent excuse to link all the EU vehicle registration systems together, all in the interests of making your life easier, you understand.
So pick your poison – being stopped by an unchecked police force or hahaving an EU wide vehicle registration system
.-= ´s last blog ..Why MP’s need a new expenses fiddle law =-.
One needs to be very wary about this announcement.
LR
Bit naive of you to see this as a climbdown, isn’t it? This quasi-abolition of compulsory ID cards is meaningless unless:
1. the underlying database is dismantled.
2. there is a commitment that possession of an ID card will never be a necessary condition of any entitlement to any benefit public or private (like, for instance, opening a bank account or entry on the electoral register or even drinking in a pub). How such a commitment could be enforced on the crooks in (or currently out) of office is a question I can’t answer!
Curly, Umbongo, please note my penultimate paragraph.
LR
Which only goes to show that premature ejaculation happens on blog comment threads as well as elsewhere . . . So I will read the original posting in full in future – sorry about that.
As others have mentioned, you’ve been had.
So have most of the MSM, who are headlining this as a climbdown.
The database still exists.
You’ll still have to attend an interrogation centre when you renew your passport, so that you details – and all your fingerprints – can be collected and added to the database.
After that, if you neglect to tell the Geheimstatspolizei when you move house, you’re still liable for that £1000 fine.
Do you think Call-me-Dave will abolish any of this? Don’t delude yourself.
Very little has changed; the cards were never the problem, really.
Andrew, I haven’t been had at all. There is scepticism in my penultimate paragraph. The decision to drop the airside cards is a climbdown given the vigour with which Jacqui Smith was pushing it. I am enjoying this little bit of egg on hmg’s face before business as usual.