Hopefully this will now mean ID cards are dead in the water, but we must remain vigilant...
The costs of the national identity card project crept up by a further £50m yesterday as the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, announced that a small number of transport workers will be able to volunteer to get the cards next year before the official launch date. Despite this effort to reduce the costs of creating a national network of ID enrolment centres, the latest cost report for the scheme shows that the projected overall bill continues to creep up. The bill for issuing ID cards to all foreign nationals who are long-term resident in Britain, which began this month, has risen by £7m since March to £326m. The cost for British nationals has also crept up in the last six months by a further £45m to £4.7bn over the next 10 years. This figure does not include the costs to any other government department of using the ID cards to check identities.
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clipped from www.guardian.co.uk
2 comments:
We've had them for more than 50 years now, so it doesn't seem like an issue worth getting excited about. The detention without trial thing seems a far bigger threat to freedom to me, especially when the media talk of it has the "moral high ground".
It's not so much the card (though I object to that as well) as the database behind it.
For example, the French have cards but no underlying database.
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