Some welcome news

Posted on June 30, 2009 by bobpiper

Alan Johnson’s announcement that id cards will not be compulsory for British citizens is to be welcomed. The Government always insisted that it would not be an offence not to carry your id card, and on that basis alone its capacity to counter terrorism was seriously ineffective. The notion that Osama Bin Laden, stopped by police shopping in West Bromwich, would be given 7 days to produce his id card at a local police station was always a bit daft.
However, I suspect the ‘not compulsory’ element does not run to UK passports. The biometric passports are going to become compulsory in many countries in the world in any event, so I would imagine the Government will plough ahead with that. So, I suppose the fact that you can ‘choose’ whether or not you have a passport means it removes at least some element of the compulsion, but I suspect some people will still be uneasy about the amount of information the biometric database will hold.
I write this having sat for hours on one of Richard Branson’s high speed railway carriages, in heat way into the nineties, with the air conditioning broken down whilst a signal failure was addressed near Watford Junction. Bloody private sector… couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery!

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5 Responses to Some welcome news

  1. Carl says:
    June 30, 2009 at 8:40 pm

    Too right Bob. For what it wanted to achieve, there were obvious pitfalls. And the costs…
    I’m still partly under the suspicion that a lot of people will, given the right conditions, entrust organisation’s with some private information anyway – such as their consumption trends shown by clubcard usage, or even the amount of people who DID NOT get removed from the DNA database after Mark Thomas’ appeals. But this still does not make it necessarily right.
    In any case, it frees up some cash in the (ever-decreasing) kitty.
    Pity about your train journey. As for me, I was working in what I believe to be the hottest classroom in the history of ever today. And apparently open windows does more harm than good…nightmare!

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  2. jethro tull says:
    June 30, 2009 at 9:19 pm

    Gov should scrap Trident as well, IPPR and former defence minister says it should be scrapped. 10′s of billions of pounds would be saved.

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  3. Ian McNee says:
    June 30, 2009 at 10:57 pm

    Oh Bob! As if Osama bin Laden would be shopping in West Brom!
    As any fule kno, Wolverhampton centre offers a far superior shopping experience to the discerning fundamentalist ideologue about town.

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  4. Curly says:
    July 1, 2009 at 9:49 am

    One needs to be very wary about this announcement Bob.

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  5. Gary Elsby says:
    July 1, 2009 at 2:42 pm

    Don’t know so much Bob.
    We don’t need life or house content insurance but it’s a bit dodgy not having any.
    So what the chance coming across some important instance in life and being asked to produce some valid ID and not the pension book or gas bill?
    I’m suspect on the ‘non compulsory ID’ idea.
    We either have it or we don’t. Simple.

    Reply