Gordon Brown and his walking incompetence of a Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (I just bet she puts a little heart over the ‘i’) are desperate to roll out biometric ID (already proven insecure) in the teeth of all opposition.
But because of that opposition, they plan to do it by stealth, by imposing it on resident foreigners, airport workers (whatever happened to ‘no-one will lose their job through not having the card’?) and students, whilst all the while spinning this creeping compulsion as a series of pilot schemes.
The project will begin in November with compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals. Within three years all new foreign applicants arriving in the UK will have to have a card. British workers in sensitive jobs, such as airport staff, will have to enrol from 2009.
But I’ve had a brilliant idea: since New Labour think the whole ID card idea is so fine and dandy then why not – in the light of recent invasions of parliament by protestors – start by issuing cards to their parliamentary colleagues, lobby journalists, political apparatchiks and various spouses and assorted hangers-on and compelling them to be carry the card at all times when in Parliament? What better way to show their faith in ID cards?
I’m sure all these entirely trustworthy people will be perfectly happy and’ll have no problem with providing fingerprints, iris scans, DNA samples and all the other 50-odd separate bits of information required for the card while cheerily forking out the necessary hundred pounds for the privilege of doing so.
I’m sure they’ll be fully in support of the massive national database and petty bureaucracy that’ll be required to support the scheme too.
Won’t they?
