@Simple ID system
"So most people in Britain today need ID. All I'm suggesting is that simple system can provide most of the requirements:"
All your suggestions are already adequately provided for - Passport, NI, driving license. I know you want a solution that does them all but it will be useless until it becomes useful, in which case it will become useless again.
"Cutting and pasting photo's on to ID cards only works if you not sending a picture of the card holder to a central source to be verified."
OK, so when the card itself isn't sufficient they take a picture of you and someone compares it to the central database. And this is easy? This is biometrics my friend, where key pointers of the face, or fingerprint, or iris, are compared to the stored key pointers.
"Each card has a unique ID, so it maybe possible to copy cards but this does not help as many people will be sending in a photo of the card holder."
So, to buy a drink, someone would need to take photos and swipe cards (to get the unique number) or perhaps you'd prefer RFID? Wouldn't it be cheaper for a pub to use a passport for the odd customer that looks underage?
"ITV manage to get the SMS network to respond fast enough for voting on "Dancing on ICE", that show's it could work the application does not require sub second response the first four requirements would be happy with day's as a response time and clubs and pub and shops already verify visa cards sub second so verifying an ID cards could also be done sub second."
Hmmm I think this is a little wishful thinking. Put your thinking cap on and look at how many ways *you* could bypass such a system. A GSM network blocker holds up the queue to a nightclub before they decide to stop checking with SMS? Flood the bouncers SMS gear with SMS messages?
As soon as it enabled you to obtain credit then think of the number of ways you could buy a way to bypass it and you get free money under a false ID.
"NB: The issue with chip & pin is that by closing one hole in the U.K. they opened up another, the rest of the world. Until chip and pin is used by all outlets around the world and a better way of authorising Internet based transactions is used (say some form of secure ID may be the answer) these holes will not be closed."
Chip&Pin was never meant to stop fraud, in fact it's well known that us citizens are less protected. The difference is that it comes under ATM law and not Cheque law - which means the bank no longer has to automatically refund your money, you have to prove you didn't give someone your card and PIN. A bit hard to prove a negative. Fraud losses have gone down simply because the banks have to pay out less when fraud happens. Which is why they now call it ID theft, because whilst they are responsible for your money, you are responsible for your personal ID number and if anyone steals from your account it is assumed, under ATM law, that you must have given away your pIDn.
"So in summary we already need ID's for many functions, lets have some that works and is cheap. Nothing I've seen from the government to date works not even chips in passports they keep looking at the wrong problems."
Unfortunately, so do you... find a problem that doesn't have a solution. Decide whether the cards will be compulsory. Decide who will pay for all the card readers, cameras, etc. Decide if financial transactions will be more secure because of it, and then realise someone will exploit it and mass-produce it. Just as they do with Visa cards, and Visa reacted by making Chip/Pin compulsory where *we* suffer.
Sorry. I *like* the idea of a cheap ID card but I can't see where it'd be useful.