Blunkett threatens to sue for £30 ID card refund
David Blunkett this morning claimed he may sue the government for a refund on his £30 ID card, which new laws will render worthless by the end of summer. The former Home Secretary and political originator of the ID cards scheme went on Today this morning to explain why he was right to introduce the scheme and the ConDem …
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where's the title gone?
@Ben Raynes "Most European countries have a COMPULSORY ID card scheme" - most european countries were invaded by Germany <waves at Godwin>. Not having ID cards and officious little twats on every street corner is about freedom. You know, that thing (great?) grandad fought for. Kids these days...
re the "If you travel to a country where you are required to have your national ID card or passport on your person at all times" meme: how about going somewhere nice? Or taking a chance you won't get picked up? Or telling them you no speaka da lingo? Or telling them you're a free born Englishman?
Lest we forget, blind boy Blunkett is the methodist lay preacher who fathered a kid on his mistress, and then had the gall to go for access!
Too expensive
They could have rolled out ID cards by making learners driving permits a 10 year permanent form of ID adding the biometric gubbins on there. I wonder how much that would have cost? Or maybe have a passport card for your wallet to go with the traditional form factor for travelling outside Europe, to be included in the current price.
I'm sure neither of these would have cost £4.5+ Billion and then most people would have been automatically carrier of the ID card quickly, or certainly within the 10 year period in which their existing ID will expire.
As for an entitlement card what happens if you're mugged and it lands you in the hospital, are you not entitled to treatment? If you're stopped on the street without your wallet are you not entitled to avoid prison? Would you have needed it when catching a bus?
Having an ID scheme in Russia didn't stop terrorism, so why will it work here?
Long-term roll-out
Some of us still have an old non-photo licence. Until I move house or it expires I see no reason to change.
Blunket Driving Licence
Not entirely sure that Blunkett having a driving licence is a great boost to public safety.
Wasn't the whole point of the ID card scheme that he was sulking because he couldn't have a DL?
payback time!
Maybe he has a point? Perhaps we should keep the ID card system in place just for the likes of Blindgett and his type who need to fly to a very limited number of countries or "open a bank account" on a regular basis.
We could then avoid the various contract cancellation charges (although scale things back quite a lot) and in ten years time (or should he change his address or phone number, far sooner) we can divide the running costs (circa £17B i believe) by the number of card holders and charge him said amount for renewal!
...and do the same in another ten years, and another ten years ;)
What a stupid twunt!
I'm David Blunket - and so's my wife
Now that we know the details on Blunket's card and his security question couldn't we all just apply for a David Blunket card?
The point of the card is to prove that we aren't foreign or a terrorist - which David Blunket isn't.
So if everyone has a David Blunket card we will all be safe!
Total utter wankers
What a jerk, as if he diddnt make enough out of being an 'advisor' a term I use in the loosest possible sense.
I dare say that the entire Labour front bench have pissed trillions down the drain & no chance of getting any of it back and Gordon Clown the biggest waster of all with his foolish selling of our gold at its lowest price ever.
fuck me! we have a daily express/heil reader!!
> Gordon Clown the biggest waster of all with his foolish selling of our gold at its lowest price ever.
Yes, Brown is/was an arsehole and good riddance to him and his shitty government. However this "selling our gold on the cheap" bollocks is self-righteous bullshit that defies common sense. It depends on hindsight because it uses information that's known now (today's gold price) that couldn't have been known then. Or is it part of the job description for our government overlords that they have the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy?
Unless you worked at the Treasury N2, you will not be aware of all the factors that were considered before gold and currency reserves get sold. Presumably those decisions will be the right ones given the information available AT THAT TIME. It's also very likely that the civil servants and master of the universe bankers recommend these sales or approved them. And there was consensus for that. It won't be a decision made by one individual in isolation. Democracies have mature processes and procedures to prevent that. Even Brown wouldn't have been stupid enough to decide to sell the gold without getting expert advice beforehand.
I wonder if the retards who write this "selling gold on the cheap" wanky tosh ever say to themselves "if only I held on/sold my shares/house/whatever instead of selling/keeping them just before the price went sky-high/down the toilet". Perhaps these fuckwits and the morons who swallow their bullshit will blame Brown for not time-travelling to get next week's lottery results and then coming back to buy the winning ticket for that draw. Sheesh!
Paris icon 'cos she's not dumb enough to read the Daily Diana or Daily Heil and believe the utter shite they print. Besides everyone knows it was asylum seekers and foreign paparazzi on motorcycles that forced Brown to sell the gold.
That gold again
"Unless you worked at the Treasury N2, you will not be aware of all the factors that were considered before gold and currency reserves get sold. Presumably those decisions will be the right ones given the information available AT THAT TIME. It's also very likely that the civil servants and master of the universe bankers recommend these sales or approved them"
You are assuming they did that in the interest of the country, but there is only one solution - GET IT PUBLIC. Practically anyone with a functional brain advised against it at the time, so it would be worth knowing WTF drove them to be this stupid. It's not like they left the UK with a pile of money now they have been thrown out.
Until that time I concur with the people who stated at the time that it was a VERY, VERY bad idea. It still is just that, with hindsight.
Entitlement Card?
Why doesn't he become one of Labour's beloved? An umemployable thug with a drug or drink problem and a pram load of illegitimate children in tow?
Then he'd have been entitle to everything!
(untitled)
I think you have hit the nail squarely on the head.
Where is our £257m Mr.Blunkett ? Come on pay up, your desire to spend our money to control everyone has cost us and we are entitled to be repaid for the cost of your bad deeds.
Yeah
Subheading got it right, smug even out of government, No Labour vote for me until front bench goes.
Hang on a minute
I bet that David Blunket got his card, along with other members of the then great and the good, as part of the initial roll out.
I bet no £30 changed hands in order for him to get his card.
So first I would like "proof of purchase" , if not then.....
His assertion that he will sue for his 30 quid back is obtaining money by false pretences.
Which is standard on last years Members of Parliament.
Expenses?
OK, you assertion seems to suggest it probably that he got it for free, but still expensed it :-).
The ID Card scheme had some good drivers (NHS numbers were and still are a complete heaving mess), but the problem started when the good intentions had to align with the evidently very bad ones of the people involved.
Feasibility study: yeah, sure, let it be done by the same people that are likely to get the job. Anyone who believes in Chinese walls at this level of income needs his naivety surgically removed.
Costs: if you allow the people who are going to charge you to set the price you will pay, or rather WE will pay. The people who built it were organised so badly that those, say £1500/day consultants set on their rear ends for weeks, to the point where some asked to be taken off the project (but weren't allowed). So it started off as a heaving mess, sucking up money well before there was a semblance of a plan, but surely there is..
Supervision? Well, the nominal role of the NAO is to check that such abuse doesn't occur. The only problem is that friends don't hurt friends. It's easy to rig an audit: brief the interviewees beforehand, and use college leavers as auditors.
Most of the people that seriously cashed in on that scam have retired, so good luck catching them now.
There are ways of doing identity documents properly, but you'll need a couple of people who keep an eye on the original concept, and slightly less than 99% of people solely interested in scraping as much money out of the treasury as possible. It is needed, but it needs to be done right.
AC@16:34
It would make the UK match *most* of the rest of Europe. But needed?
And if some kind of ID is "needed" is the National Identity Register "needed" as well.
The comment the UK ID card would provide more comprehensive surveillance than *any* other country *including* China, and that most descriptions of European systems indicate they operate at regional level within a country at *most* suggest (fairly strongly) it is not.
Given he UK's *very* high level of surveillance and ID requirements for doing *anything* in public life I would suggest this is a non solution to a non problem. Unless your "problem" is how to monitor the movements and abilities (in terms of driving licenses etc) of *everyone* in a country from cradle to grave.
Put that way does it sound more like a paranoid control freaks wet dream?
Does it really?
""I don't believe anybody's surveilled anything that they didn't already know about me.""
Does it really say he's a twisted little prick on his ID card?
Re: Entitlement?
"He wanted an "entitlement card", eh?"
Now why did I read that as "Internment Card" ?
I am not a number, I am a free man.
If they give me a number I am prisoner.
Whip round?
How about a Reg-reader whip-round to raise 30 quid for the blind guy? I'm sure there's many who'd happily donate a quid or two not to have to have an ID card and it should be enough to get him a new white stick.
It's alright David, problem solved.
Those awfully nice people over at Citizen card have just come up with a very generous offer to help you all out. You can now exchange your 30 quid national ID card for one of their government-approved PASS Cards for free! For those people out there in the wider population who bemoan the passing of the National ID card scheme, fear not. You can also get one for the knockdown price of 15 pounds and you won't even have to have your fingerprints taken.
No good for travelling to Europe of course, but owners of the National ID card didn't seem to fare any better either. So there you go, David, Jacqui, Alan, Gordon, Tony; a nationally-approved ID card that didn't require a single penny of tax-payer's money to implement. Why didn't you think of that?
Hmmm....
Blunkett don't need an id card, whenever anybody sees him they will think "Here's that idiot that thinks id cards are a good idea".
tell him
to go forth and fornicate.
No hold on, he's already done that.
And in any case if some jumped up community liason officer( aka plastic policeman) stopped me in the street and demanded my identity card, he'd get the same message.
It's Your Tescos Club Card You Dimwit!
How can he tell that he's got an ID card? It could be another type of card. As far as I know they never did braille for ID cards, so if he's rubbing his fingers over the card to work out what it is then he needs to be rubbing something else.....
....Paris comes to mind, I can't think why.
I got one....
Purely for convenience. It's quite handy for EU travel (it's a rare occurence for me to go outside the EU, in which case I would need a visa anyway). I've never had a problem when using it and all operators I have used (AirFrance Régional, bmi, BA, Eurotunnel, P&O) have taken it without issue. Some EU countries do also require you to have your passport or national identity card on you at all times, so forgive me if I think something that slots in my wallet is a tad more convenient than a ruddy gert book.
I see it as less of an ID card, and more of a small passport. In fact, my drivers licence has more visible sensitive information on it. Someone get's my drivers licence, they also get my address. The only visible useful info on my ID card is Name and Date/Place of Birth and let's face it. The average street mugger doesn't have any interest in trying to access biometric data or would even know how to pass this information on. I would be far more concerned about my Credit/Debit cards and Drivers Licence falling into their hands.
It is not, and should never be compulsory. Even Labour knew they would never get away with making it compulsory. If you don't want one, don't get one. But given the sums spent on it, I think the ConDem's are wasting an even more obscene amount of cash by scrapping it purely out of spite.
I probably won't fight to get my £30 back, because it's not a battle I have any chance of winning. But please Dave/Nick, can we at least look at introducing a small passport for EU travel, because I'm not sure my actual passport will last for much longer in my pocket.
@Jim Morrow - no hindsight required!
Actually, | recall at the time several articles pointing out it was bloody stupid to announce to the World + dog the UK was about to flog half its gold reserve.
Other nations sold some of theirs at around the same time, but had the good sense not to announce it first and drip fed it into the market.
Brown's stupidity was to dump it in one go, thereby getting the worst possible price - same as happens when there's a surplus of oil on the market > price goes down, simple economics of supply & demand. Doesn't take a genius to work that out, and as I recall GB went against the direct advice of the Treasury...
There is
not enough money in the country to be able to have id cards, the last government wasted it on 2 jags for some people and expenses.
You would have to be blind not to be able to see that.
Schaedenfraude in my view
Surely he must have seen this coming......
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