I "delayed" my passport application - by applying 5 years early for a new one. That way, I'm off the ID card database for the next 10 years, by which time perhaps they'll have scrapped the whole thing (or at least made it secure). I guess enough people did that for it to affect the budget! Shame they didn't get the hint.

All we need is 5.4 Bn. Ok, so if there's cost overruns, all those MPs voting for it pony up the difference. If the whole thing falls through, we get back all the dosh.

The first should be easy peasy: they did a lot of calculations on cost, so they wouldn't get it wrong, would they.

The second is to stop Blunkett's old company (the one he went to when he was kicked out of office as an MP) getting a fat paycheck and then, if it looks to be insufficient, closing the deal down.

If they did their sums correctly, no worries, eh?

once EDS, Capgemini and capita have sucked the budget dry you wont be able to afford a tinfoil hat!

£5.4bn so what do we recon on the cost overrun? two times? Then there is what we need to pay to get the thing (stealth tax) and how short they'll be becouse people will be out burning their ID cards (Poll tax returns?) then there will be the breach of contract costs when the new government goes "wooah this is a crack baby we must drown it" so again I think I've talked about us getting raped by the government who is getting raped by consultants? Except in this case it's all being driven by crazy people in the police, the ones who think spending a few million quid having those stupid body scanners for a few months at Euston was a good idea. So £12 billion quid + steal tax + the fact that in the end they give up. Woohoo.

That aside from the fact that the damn thing wont work! Much like that IT for the NHS travesty, and the fucking CPA they built that piece of shit department from the ground up and the computers never worked.

O well, some rich rich consultants. DRM, Copyright snooping for ISP's and a National ID scheme. Man my ass is gonna hurt by 2012 O shit and the olympics. I may need some surgery...

Anon

I got myself a passport a year ago, not because I'm planning on travelling abroad any time soon, but because I *might* want to in the future and I didn't want a "biomentric" one

I now have ten years to wait for the Passport/ ID card system to collapse under its own inadequacies and incompetence!

"...we know there are more journeys, but we don't know if that means more people are travelling or its the same people travelling more often."

As they've been swiping my passport for years and recently taking my photo at the airport you'd think they'd be able to work that one out quite easily wouldn't you?

My only consolation is security state being constructed is run by people who are too incompetent to use the data for anything.

If you gave that information to a direct mail company you can bet your last £1 they could tell you who was travelling, how often and where to send the brouchure!