Champione!
Champione! ole! ole! ole!
What do they win?
Ministry of Defence staff are responsible for the vast majority of security passes that have gone AWOL since 2001, research by the LibDems has revealed. Still, Work and Pensions Minister James Purnell is doing his bit, managing to lose his pass over the Christmas break - in November he left confidential documents on a train. …
Of these passes were issued to civil servants or members of the armed forces.
I work within the defence sector and currently on the site I work at there is a major refurbishment going on. Consequently there are several hundred builders, plumbers, electricians and associated tradesmen all of whom have been issued with an ID card. Some of these are transient and therefore may not be working here next week. If they don't hand back their pass, then that probably counts as lost.
Because of the nature of most MoD locations, it's hardly surprising that they issue a _lot_ of passes.
<pedant>
Since you've stated that Chris Huhne *said* this and you've got him down as the source quoted, the "sic" cannot be used and you should just have quietly corrected the spelling as the misspelling is part of the transcription of the quote and not the quote itself.
In order for that to make sense, you would have to introduce this as something like: "...Chris Huhne, as quoted in today's <insert name of misspelled source>, said".
Unless, of course, he wrote it rather than said it..........
</pedant>
Surely the pass is nondescript. A photo (of the person in civies) at most and nothing else. No badge, address or number to differentiate it from any other generic ID badge. Also, surely, as soon as the pass is reported missing it gets de-activated (and thus poses no risk).
Lose the pass - what's the big? Unless it says "Direct access to top-secret nuclear base" on it, no-one will know what it is for.
Really, this is a big hoo-hah over precisely nothing.
About 1 in every 10,000 British Citizens has lost one of these ID cards.
How many of us actually work for the government?
They could introduce a policy where losing your ID card meant paying £10 for a new one or getting the sack for not being at your desk during working hours. That would generate them more than £50,000 each year... not a lot in terms of government budgets but that's not the point. It would also give emlpoyees more of an incentive to keep a close eye on their ID!
Didn't we do this story last year? Once again the MOD passes are as issued to all members of the Armed forces, all civilian support staff and all contractors who regularly visit MOD bases. That's around 200,000 passes. Losing 38,000 in 8 years represents less than 3% per year. Given that these cards are useless to anyone who doesn't look the same as the image on the card I'm struggling to see the crisis.