The Manchester Evening News has been investigating Labour’s ID Card trial in Greater Manchester last November. Only 13,200 signed up from a population of over two million.
The MEN reveals how:
* Senior Whitehall officials were urged to email friends and relatives encouraging them to buy cards because of fears about the level of demand
* UK and overseas border guards refused to recognise the cards – with one traveller chased through an Italian airport after trying to use one as ID
* The Home Office discovered the cards could stop some credit cards from working properly
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Knaptoft: The very heart of England
We do have a two-tier policing system but it is not what our homegrown racists think it is.
From Norman settlement to a civic square
Church Green video
Tom Arms
Ruth Bright
Tom Bailey
Alex Macfie
8 Comments
Oh come on first of all they were not mandatory and people were not told of its uses If you want to understand really good reasons for ID cards ask those citizens of 60 countries where they are mandatory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card_policies_by_country
If you want to understand the merits of national identity cards ask the poor people of India who could not even prove they are residents of India even though they live there. Now Indian government has atleast some sense that it is now introducing ID cards based on biometrics to identify individuals in the country so they can be provided the services they deserve. By abolishing them dont think you have done something great you have done a great disservice to the people who are oppressed and sidelined.
I’m sorry KA but there is absolutely nothing you can say that is going to convince me that ID cards were ever a good idea.
They were originally sold to the public as a way to combat terrorism. That soon went down the pan and then they trolleyed out other excuses.
You tell me how you have a problem accessing services. Come on. When is that ever going to be an argument for a British citizen. If you want confirmed proof of being born or entitled to a British way of life why not stick a microchip in to all babies and migrants!! You can use these in the future to track everyones movements through the mobile phone network. Bit alarmist but then so was Labour need to moniter every aspect of our lives. We are monitored far to much as it is. So you can get lost to ID cards. The reason I joined the Lib Dems in the first place and am proud at their involvement in the removal of these abominations.
Expensive missold waste of time. Didn’t work last time, didn’t work this time. Good riddance.
The idea of having to prove that you are a citizen is both repugnant and absurd. We don’t do that sort of thing here.
Now here’s an excellent reason for not having them: to stop this sort of insanity. If we don’t have an ID card system then nobody can lock up public services such that people who have lost their ID card cannot access them. The Indian government would solve their problems more quickly and efficiently by doing the same as us, and getting rid of that rubbish.
Just ask the homeless and no fixed abode individuals of this country how difficult is them to access services , e.g. NHS. The problem is Lib Dems by aligning with xxxxx have forgotten the sidelined classes.
So you are telling me that the citizens of those 60 countries which include Germany , Greece and Spain dont care about their freedom. One more thing the infrastructure which has been introduced for Id cards is being used for N0n-EU biometric residence permits so migrants are being “chipped”
@KA
Well claiming that another country does something will not wash with the british public. That argument could be used to justify any number of evils.
I have been taken to hospital twice in my life and on neither occation was there a question of not offering treatment. There was concern over ensuring I was not alergic to anything but never a question of my need to “prove” who I was.
I think you need to give the staff who provide public services more credit, they provide the service required rather than waste time confirming “entitlement.”
@KA how would the homeless be helped by ID Cards they couldn’t have afforded and where would they be ‘registered’. They need homes not plastic cards.
KA, you’re forgetting the fact that the National Identity Scheme was always about the compulsory database, not the voluntary cards. The purpose was to build the largest Government repository of information about people anywhere in the Western world. A database so detailed, so widely accessible that it would have been illegal in Germany, where they’ve learned the value of keeping personal details away from Government.
The NIS was useless for all of its purported aims; while there may be some merits to a simple ID card system without a central database, that’s not what was being proposed, nor what was being implemented.
I’m very happy to see the NIS gone, but the Identity Documents Act leaves loopholes which would make a similar system easy to introduce, possibly without further primary legislation. Also, the Coalition are violating their own agreement to put patients back in control of their medical information, by continuing with the Summary Care Records scheme. The work of No2ID has achieved a big result, but the Database State is far from over…
I can tell with my hand on my heart that there is a lot of scare scaremongering about NIS and CRS and the details they capture are no where near what you guys tell me.
How do i know ?; well i actually worked on them.