Jeremy Clarkson, ID cards and identity fraud

Labour do seem to have gone cooler on their plans for new ID cards - I hope they drop them completely - see previous blogs - but I am not so sure they will see sense - indeed from 2009 foreign nationals - that includes my Norwegian partner, who has lived here for 21 years, her grownup daughters and grand daughter who have all lived here - will it seems be forced to carry the cards from 2009 together with those that 'volunteer' to join the scheme. This huge bureaucracy for what?? There is no evidence it helps with terrorism or fraud......

SchNEWS carried a piece about this in their last issue - I've used some of it for this blog - basically the country is just a little short of dosh at the moment, having spent the entire NHS budget propping up Northern Rock. Add to that the more than minor embarrassment that government departments seem to lose hundreds of laptops a year full of personal details about all of us. If you've got a child then the chances are your bank account details were lost by Revenue and Customs - while the same government department lost details of 300 'high value' tax-free savings accounts. And now the Ministry of Defence, which loses 600 laptops a year, has misplaced the details of 600,000 people who have applied to join the armed forces.

Jeremy Clarkson recently published his bank details in his newspaper column, rubbishing the idea of identity fraud. He was soon amusingly proved wrong as one cheeky wag set up a direct debit for £500 per month from his account to a diabetes charity. Clarkson was forced to publicly admit he was completely wrong - eating humble pie this time as opposed to custard, as he did when a protester gave him one in the face at Oxford university a couple of years ago).

Anyhow despite the fact that the Passport Agency, Home Office, NHS have all attempted huge IT projects that have ended in fiasco I am not convinced the GOvernment will drop ID cards (See more re Governments record in my press release from 2005 ). I would strongly urge folk to read more and sign up for regular news from NO2ID at www.no2id.net