Friday, February 17, 2006

ID cards (again)

Apparently the introduction of ID cards in the UK is set to suffer further delays (awww what a shame). But unfortunately it is looking increasingly likely to happen, despite the government still failing to communicate any tangible benefit to having them.

I object to the government wasting £10bn (£166 for every UK citizen) on this nonsense. For the same amount we could give everyone in the country a freeview twin tuner PVR! Now lets ask people what they'd rather have for their tax money?

All I can say is they'd better not charge for them like passports. It now costs £51 to renew your passport - which is totally outrageous - probably the best example of ripoff Britain yet in fact. Maybe the government should look at their own costs before criticising car dealerships! And of course we have to pay for our photocard driving licenses too. Which I think should be fixed - surely those of us who can drive could have one card that was both ID card and driving license - and thus save on duplicated admin costs.

And having to carry more stuff around in my wallet? No thanks - it's bad enough in continental Europe when you can't check into a hotel without showing your passport - I really don't want to have to do that here.

I've been a victim of ID theft in the past and having yet another poorly secured government database out there chock full of personal data doesn't fill me with confidence.

This nonsense about ID cards helping fight terrorism needs to be neutered - how exactly does it help. "Oooh look that bloke from Leeds just blew himself up, but fortunately the explosion was muffled by the immense piles of government related paper he had to carry on his person....."

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1 comment:

Wreckferret said...

Although it seems it keeps changing every time you look, the one I did hear was that it was going to be voluntary initially, although if you were applying for a Passport, then you had to get one as part of the process....
Although curiously enough, the article reporting this wasn't able to say how much extra it would cost you when you sent off.

But you're right! the prices for passports these days are a rip off anyway.

Thankfully I won't need a new one until 2014...... unless I decide to holiday to Israel in the interim (& thas stupid- "we won't let you in our country if your passport says you've visited one of our neighbours, na-na-na." Talk about schoolyard antics! Ok- so I'll have 2 passports then- d'uh!).

But I'm sure that the enforced purchase of you Identity will come in before I have to renew.