back to article Home Office stonewalls ID findings

The Home Office is refusing to release 'research' it carried out which was meant to prove just how very keen young people in the UK are to get hold of a delicious ID card. The department blew almost £80,000 setting up a site to find out what people aged between 16 and 25 thought of ID cards. The site operated from July to mid- …

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  1. alan 39
    FAIL

    Just how bad must it be

    If they cant spin it to something good???

  2. John Robson Silver badge

    Possibly...

    "We've asked the anonymous spinner when the end of the process is likely to be, and whether the people concerned will still be young. They've not got back to us yet. We'll get back to you when they do..."

    You'll have retired, it'll be your successors who have to get back to us in our graves...

  3. Fred 1

    Drumming up demand

    I noticed recently, that they are asking anyone who appears to be under 25 for ID before they can buy alcohol. Presumably this is to make all of the young folks desperate to sign up. Machiavelli would be so proud.

  4. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Alien

    Control the Word ... Control the World .... is a Great Plan, but ...

    .... one does have to Know the How and the Why for IT to All Work Effortlessly in AI Singularity.

    Sadly are the Present Shower of Freeloaders in Government unfit for such Future Purpose as their default policies of trying to deny/censure/censor alternative views, in favour of placement of their own gravy train scams and fraudulent schemes, are unworkable and anti-democratic too, but that is no surprise to anybody, I'm sure.

    And yes, you can quote me on that...... and you can also question/ask the Present Shower Cabinet why they are sitting on such AIdDevelopments that Virtually Guarantee Better Beta and more Equitable Power Controls. And should they deny any Knowledge of the Same, then Evidence can be Produced to Prove them ..... well, Compulsive Liars would not be Untruthful whenever there are Economies of Truth, and that would be the Least of their Worries.

  5. dunncha
    Thumb Up

    nothing wrong with the Yoof

    This has cheered me up.

    Maybe the Yoof do give a shit about what is going around them.

    ID Cards are gone. But I guess the downside is we are all gonna be killed in our beds with the sudden on-rush of terrorists that have been cowering/cringing at how much more difficult a little peice of plastic would have made it to wreak murder and mayhem.

    I bet Baroness Scotland wished she had checked somebodies ID Card...... or should she have checked her empoyee's CRB... or ensured her employee's were Vetted!........or ensure her empoyee's DNA whas been retained....or her employee against the Travel Database.... or spending database or maybe even her Nectar card.

  6. seanj
    Big Brother

    Findings?

    Does anyone seriously believe that there will ever be any published findings on this?

    Labour just can't seem to accept that there is no support for this hare-brained scheme, whether they target older voters, or "yoof".

    Simply, we've seen far too many rights taken away in the name of "security", there are still many of us who managed to get on with our lived throughout the IRA's campaign of terror without so much FUD being excreted by our "Leaders"' collective front-rectum, and there needs to be a line in the sand.

    I'd say "cross it at your peril, Labour Party", but it doesn't really matter any more, anything they attempt now will not wipe out the memory of 12 years of mismanagement, incompetence and outright criminality. To call Gordon Brown a lame duck is, at this point, an understatement and offensive to ducks with a genuine lower body disability.

    The only realy question now is: Will our next Government undo all these abuses of power, or keep them in place under the guise of "priorities".

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Just like the Lisbon referendum in Eire...

    ...they will keep asking the question until the public give the correct answer.

    You think this is about democracy? About the will of the people? There's too many deals and directorships going for the MPs and civil servants to ever let ID cards and related systems die. The deal is done, it is going to happen, nothing can stop it. If you don't like it there is only one option; leave.

    Welcome to Britain - you will obey the machine.

  8. djack
    Big Brother

    When we get the right answer.

    You missed then end of a quote :

    “Mylifemyid was one of a number of pieces of work undertaken with young people. However, as our work with young people is still continuing, it was decided to wait and publish a full picture of the insights gained at the end of the process when we can make the data say what we wanted it to at the start.”

    Cynical? Moi?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    'work undertaken with young people'

    So presumably all the officials will have been vetted to make sure they are suitable for working with young and vulnerable people.

    Ah sorry, I forgot the 'position of trust' element. No chance of that ever happening.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Time for a FOI request?

    Not that I'm volunteering. I've pushed the idea 'out there'. My bit's done. Someone else can do all the grubbing around.

  11. The Dorset Rambler
    FAIL

    What's the betting that

    this report will be delayed until the gubmint can demonstrate the response it wants.

  12. Gav
    Megaphone

    Spin Translation

    "it was decided to wait and publish a full picture of the insights gained at the end of the process"

    Translation; we've spent the last year cobbling together another 'survey' with a fraction of the number of people, carefully selected by ourselves, conducted in secret. We'll use that to 'balance' the negative results from the first survey, which we'll bury at the back of the report under appendix Z where no-one, hopefully, will read it.

    This gives us the 'full picture' with the answers we wanted from the start. Thank you for your interest.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Unsurprising reactions all round

    (Young) People don't want ID Cards as framed - or probably at all.

    The governmemnt are hardly likely to want to let Gen Pub know.

    If, however, there had been overwhelming support you can bet there would have been an interim announcement and an upping of the pace. This is an £80k long grass job.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    I lied about my age...

    ...and I sneeked in to see what people were saying and said a few things myself before being thrown out and having my IP banned.

    There was some very good writing, pretty much all of it arguing against the ID card and ID database. However I do not feel it was representitive of the population of the UK.

    I don't think any Internet based forum is respresentitive of the UK. The people who comment tend to express very different opinions to those who don't comment. The people who feel compelled to comment tend to be in opposition to the so called main stream consensus.

    If you disgree with what comes out of the TV you might shout at it, or better still write in and complain. However if you are quite happy to have your ID card and get injected with HPV vaccine then what is there to say? Especially if they hide the fact that loads of people are against it.

    The government are doing the right thing in ignoring the complete failure of My Life My ID. No one apart from us is really going to notice. They can easily and maybe correctly say that most people are happy to have an ID card.

    I say it's the right thing, I will qualify that to say it's the right way for them to advance the adgenda of the police state. I assume everyone here agrees that the adgenda is a police state.

    Regards,

    Wayland.

  15. Grahame 2
    Thumb Up

    Surprised?

    After taking a look at mylifemyid.org when it was up. I was please to see that despite what is said in the papers, young people are smarter and better informed than the Home Office took them for,

  16. Scott 19
    Troll

    Tear to your eye

    Looking at the related stories brings a tear to my eye, Wacky Jacki and her pron loving hubby, good trolling days they where.

    Why do all the bad things in life live for ever but the good things in life blow out in seconds?

  17. Nordrick Framelhammer

    In plain english...

    "We got completely fucked by all the fack that 99.9% of the comments were negative so we will not be releasing them until they are massaged so thoroughly that the results will say what we want them to say, even though everyone with even 1 operating brain cell, thus eliminating all politicians, knows that nobody wants the bloody thing"

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What if lapdog Blair becomes EU President?

    Tony Blair is candidate for the presidency of the EU council. Unelected Brown will be able to vote for Blair as the council president, and Blair will be able to drive this Biometric mass surveillance CCTV world all across Europe.

    So even if you eject Brown from power, Blair will be in a position where he can force the agenda through the EU and overrule the UK.

    Blair is not a leader, he is a US lapdog. When Clinton was in power, he modelled himself after Clinton, when Bush was in power he modelled himself after Bush. Whatever wars Bush wanted to start, Blair gave him the fake third party evidence, whatever economic bubble Cheney wanted to blow, Blair blew too, yap yap yap.

    We don't want or need a lapdog in a position of power, we need a leader not a yapping lapdog.

    http://stopblair.eu/

    A man who told the *truth* to foreign powers,but *lied* to Parliament should not be trusted with power.

  19. B. Frank

    Translation

    No way are ministers going to OK publication this close to a general election.

  20. Elmer Phud
    FAIL

    Amazed

    Amazed that they have come up with a site even more useless than Ask Frank.

    Well, amazed but not really surprised -- "how do we get this over to the young peope about the horrors of . . .* "

    *insert social demon of choice here.

  21. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Joke

    Mylifemyid

    From the people who brought you stopphoulplay.com ?

  22. Guy Herbert
    Big Brother

    @ seanj

    "I'd say "cross it at your peril, Labour Party", but it doesn't really matter any more, anything they attempt now will not wipe out the memory of 12 years of mismanagement, incompetence and outright criminality."

    I'd be prepared to bet that the civil service (and especially the Home Office and the Cabinet Office) is preparing to do precisely that - to wipe the official memory of the worthlessness of its previous policies in order to get the new administration following the same *departmental* thinking. The way they'd do it is using the rules that are supposed to protect ministers from embarassment:

    "An incoming Minister should not have access to any minutes or documents written by a predecessor of a different Party other than those which were published or put in the public domain by that predecessor; nor should he be told whether directly or by access to departmental papers which would tell him exactly what his predecessor had said. *Moreover, it may be equally important to withhold papers which show the advice given by officials to the previous Minister even though there may be no indication on them of his views.*"

    [My *emphasis*]

    (Directory of Civil Service Guidance, Volume 2, quoting, with approval, a parliamentary answer written for Margaret Thatcher by the Cabinet Office in 1980.)

    There have already been very carefully balanced attacks by distinguished former civil servants on the use of special advisers by the current administration, which I'm glad to say the Tories have not fallen into the trap of endorsing.

  23. Vincent Ballard
    Alert

    Not so simple

    An AC wrote "If you don't like it there is only one option; leave."

    I have left, but unless I manage to gain citizenship here before I need to renew my passport that might not be enough.

  24. Ian 11

    Translation

    What they really said:

    “Mylifemyid was one of a number of attempts at indoctrinating young people into our surveillance society. However, as our work with young people is still continuing, it was decided to wait and publish the picture we want to publish at the end of the process when we've actually figured out how to indoctrinate young people now we've realised they're not as stupid as we actually thought.”

  25. Andy Taylor
    Unhappy

    Getting the right results

    @The Dorset Rambler - of course they're waiting until they have the results they want. It's a common tactic. They've taken things a stage further with the Badman review of Home Education, fed up with not getting the result they wanted 4 times in 3 years, they've found a lackey to write what they want him to. Now they've given him extra time to "collect more evidence" for an upcoming Select Committee review of the review because he can't now produce the evidence to back up what he said.

    Yes, Minister anyone?

  26. Jo-mo
    FAIL

    You can still see the forums at MyLifeMyID...

    ...and see for yourself exactly what the report has to document.

    Here -> http://id-watch.co.uk/2008/10/27/mirrors/

    Essentially, the pro-ID card arguments were so lame and so few in number that the admins had to play devil's advocate right from the start - and even then, they got destroyed.

    If you look through the forums, you'll find hundreds of posts, mostly very well written and intelligent, dissecting ID cards and their problems, and making any pro-ID posts look childish by comparison. I don't think they expected that young people had the interest or the brains to have had an informed opinion on the matter...

  27. Winkypop Silver badge
    Stop

    Never hold a survey or an inquiry unless...

    ...you can guarantee the answer you want.

    Shyster's 1st law .

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @AC 09:03

    A few FOI requests (including mine) about this shabby attempt to suppress public consultation data are already out there - all of them palmed off with pathetic non-responses about how IPS will publish "all their young people data (sic) together". Those are probably worth pursuing through the ICO, but in the meantime, you could always ask the guy who was paid to carry out the survey directly...

    http://thefutureplace.typepad.com/the_future_place/2009/08/the-new-mr-book-idea-moves-on.html#comments

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Goods and Services

    "The Home Office is refusing to release 'research' it carried out which was meant to prove just how very keen young people in the UK are to get hold of a delicious ID card."

    Did we not pay for this 'research' (= 'crap')?

    Do we not - as buyers of this 'service' (= 'crap') - have some kind of right to demand its publication, or at the very least do we have any means of demanding our money back?

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Still polishing...

    ... a turd.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Tony Blair’s four children have Irish citizenship

    If TB doesn't want his children on the NIR it must be bad ...

    http://www.no2id.net/newsblog/2009-09/the-young-oblairs-former-prime-ministers-children-have-irish-passports-thanks-to-their-grandmother/

  32. Le Chiffre

    @ Guy Herbert

    We should move away from the Permanent Secretary to a system like that in the US where very senior positions are subject to the spoils system. See, for quick reference:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system

  33. Armus Squelprom
    FAIL

    Lies, just more more lies

    They'll cook up some rubbish using biased questions or tame samples, and then they'll release it as a positive change story - "Young people told us what needed to be tackled to make this work - we listened and we reviewed our proposals. Now young people say that the relaunched New-Entitlement-Citizen-Card is great!"

  34. Nick Pettefar

    Ages? Really Young People?

    Having just had a look at the aforementioned site, I am not ready to believe that the participants are young people - the arguments and language used are not what I am used to hearing from young people I have experience of. (Innit. Lol.) What criteria did the site use to guarantee only Young People participated? (Did they need to show their ID cards?) Maybe the site was used by slightly older naughty people to air their views? Just a thought from this Older Person.

  35. Louis 5
    Thumb Up

    @ Nick Pettefar

    While that is certainly possible, it sounds to me like you buy into the Daily Fail view of "yoof" in that they are all hanging around street corners in hoodies?

    I for one know 2 teenagers who registered and posted articulate, intelligent comments on that site. They read El Reg, among other sites, and they know a damned sight more about the world than most people my age (wrong side of 30) do.

    So, either get out and meet more young people, not just the gang of muggers in training hanging around outside your local Tesco, or stop criticising something you know nothing about.

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