Hmmm...
As I understand it they are still valid, so why would anyone need a refund?
In addition, when it passes it's expiry date then it will be worth a fortune, like a misprinted bank note!
Wish I had one.
No refunds for ID card pioneers
The government is set to refuse refunds to people who have forked out good money for ID cards. There will be a bill to abolish the cards, along with electoral and parliamentary reform - a move to equally-populated constituencies and to the Alternative Vote system - in the Queen's Speech tomorrow. But thousands of people …
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Monday 24th May 2010 11:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Semantically speaking, you are right...
but the Labour party formed the Government that allowed the Civil Service to pursue this ill-conceived scheme. The OP was wrong because the Labour Government (see what I did there?) were mandated to govern the country by a majority vote, and by extension were mandated by those same voters to turn the country into Oceana. The populace always get the government they vote for...
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Monday 24th May 2010 12:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Change without mandate = betrayal
@AC: "The populace always get the government they vote for..."
Allow me to clarify why I hold Labour to account for this. We elect governments on the basis of their policies and perceived integrity. That provides the elected government with a mandate to proceed with its policies. An elected government can't turn its back on election policies and say, "great, now we are in office we can do as we please". It would no longer be the government people voted for.
Labour endeavoured to make sweeping changes to this country that were never debated or presented to the public (to provide a mandate for those changes). It also ignored growing calls for debate or justification, misrepresented the extent of the changes, and presented misleading statistics.
Friends and associates I spoke to about the ID card and linked database had almost no idea what Labour was doing, and were shocked when I presented the facts. Then, at various stages, Labour made statements that seemed to indicate it had stopped the scheme. When others expressed relief to me, I had to point out that nothing had changed and the scheme was still ploughing ahead. Again, the reaction was shock.
Labour betrayed the country by its actions and should be held to account.
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Monday 24th May 2010 22:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Ralph 5
I agree that Labour are in fact culpable and in reading back my initial post, I don't think I made that clear. However, I still disagree that Labour had no mandate over ID cards. Politically, they didn't say that they wouldn't introduce ID cards and databases -- they didn't say that they would either. Please note that I don't think that exonerates them at all, I just think that to claim that they pursued this without public mandate is spurious.
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Wednesday 26th May 2010 00:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Do be quiet!
The railways were privatised under Labour and it was actually Wilson that went back on a promise over Beeching's Axe, closing the vast majority of the rail network! Labour supporters have never dealt in 'fact' (not that Tory supporters do either!), the reverence of Campbell within the party it testament to that. It's not as if the Conservatives are the only ones without sin either--I don't recall them taking us into an unwinnable *illegal* war over oil with claim of full scale attacks on major European cities with WMDs in under 45 minutes of the decision being made!
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Monday 24th May 2010 09:38 GMT irish donkey
They should all write to Sad-Jacqui
She had 1000's of people writing to her asking when the ID Cards were coming in.
Maybe they should write to her now if they really want a refund.
She's looking for a job any offers out there for an over the hill, unemployable ex home secretary that has just lost her job and needs massive expenses to support her husbands porn habit.
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Monday 24th May 2010 09:02 GMT Dodgy Geezer
Cashback from the government...??
"..The government is set to refuse refunds to people who have forked out good money for ID cards..."
Like the Lottery, the ID Cards turned out to be a tax on stupidity and gullibility. Presumably these were the people who were calling for more government interference in our lives? I can't think of a better group of people to tax a bit!
Although, of course, these items may command a high price on ebay as rarities? Perhaps the early purchasers were cleverer than we thought.......
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Monday 24th May 2010 09:02 GMT Eponymous Cowherd
Serves 'em right....
Still, the "nothing to hide" brigade can take comfort in the fact that they will be useful for scraping ice from their car windscreens, next winter.
Having said that, those that were *forced* to have ID cards (foreign nationals) *should* be offered a refund as they had no choice in the matter.
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Monday 24th May 2010 09:02 GMT lIsRT
Can't we charge them even more now?
The people with ID cards should consider themselves lucky the database isn't being kept - with massively increased fines if they fail to keep their details current.
That's what I'd do anyway, let them have their Big Brother if seem to want it, and leave us in peace.
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Monday 24th May 2010 09:02 GMT Lee Dowling
Ha ha
Oh, how brilliant! First, why should they get a refund? They *WANTED* an ID card and were never given any guarantee that pubs, shops, banks, passport control etc. would be *required* to accept it forever. They paid out for it voluntarily. Nobody "made" them get an ID card, even if it seemed like that was imminent. They were fools at the time and were derided on this very website, in these comments pages.
To "refund" them would only cost every taxpayer more money for a scheme which attracted almost universal criticism and which only about 5000 people out of the population wanted... I can probably find groups on Facebook petitioning the government to sell the UK to China with more supporters than that. Nobody made them pay, they *wanted* to be alpha-testers for this stupid idea, in fact they had to pre-register in order to even be considered, so that's that. They paid their price, got their product - an ID card that was valid ID - and that's the end of it.
In other news, beta-testers for a new MMORPG that paid £60 to get on the testing list, before it was officially released, find out that the company has decided not to release the product in the end anyway. Same thing. You were wasting your money even *if* they were eventually made compulsory, and the warning signs that the whole thing would be scrapped were there in the media all the time... "the whole country", "every airport worker", "some immigrants", "oh, sod it, just a couple of volunteers from Manchester then..."
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Monday 24th May 2010 09:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
haha
Now that we've weeded out the nations most dangerous assholes (i.e. the ones dumb enough to buy into ID cards, but smart enough to fill out the application form without chewing the corners) we should take serious proactive action to minimize their influence in society.
At the very least they should be made to sign some sort of common sense offender's register. Preferably however they should be made to wear some kind of electronic Dunce hat with warning lights and sirens built in so that the public know who they're dealing with. The hat could be linked to a traditional ankle bracelet via bluetooth, take the hat off and some coppers come round to give you a bloody good beating and exchange your old hat for a larger, more obnoxious one.
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Monday 24th May 2010 09:04 GMT JimmyPage
Petty and mean ?
Whilst I have no sympathy for the ID Card fanbois, who deserve to lose their money for supporting such a crackpot scheme, I would hope that those people who were forced to get a card as part of their job are refunded. And if they can't distinguish between the two, then all should have a refund.
Surely we can be magnanimous in victory ?
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Monday 24th May 2010 09:05 GMT OSC
From the original article
"The cards – which can currently be used to travel in Europe without a passport – will be invalidated and individuals who paid £30 for them will be forced to purchase a passport instead"
Did anyone successfully use one of those cards for anything?
However, an alternative spin would be "govt will repeal law threatening £1000 fine for those (stupid enough) to voluntarily obtain ID cards; failing to notify change of address"
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Monday 24th May 2010 09:05 GMT michael W
voluntary or not?
It was only mandatory for new citizens that were here either because of being a student or getting married, everyone else bought them voluntarily.
So I just think of it this way, those that were forced were simply paying £30 for the privilege of living here and those that weren't forced were stupid enough to agree to such a ridiculous scheme in the first place.
No harm done really, especially as it'd supposedly cost 500mill to completely refund it all.
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Monday 24th May 2010 10:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Quit moaning -- the trophy now belongs to you!
No amount of whinging about "Tory years of misrule" will change the fact that the Brown government was the worst we've ever had. Yes, poll tax was bad; yes, privatisation was botched; and yes, the Tories at their worst were strident and heartless. But not once, ever, has a Tory government managed to combine incompetence, envy, puritanism, profligacy and stifling political correctness on the scale managed by Brown's lot!
The Trophy for Worst Ever Government now belongs to *you* - so laugh it up, fuzzball!
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Monday 24th May 2010 14:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
For sheer evil
You have to flag up Brown whilst he was Chancellor as well as Brown whilst he was PM. Blair might have sent the boys to Iraq and Afghanistan, but Brown was the one who didn't pay for their equipment, whilst instead running up the biggest deficit ever (and the biggest debt in real terms since the second world war) during a period of boom; leaving nothing in the bank for when things went horribly wrong.
Iraq was a big mistake, but in terms of effect on the people of the United Kingdom, Brown has done more damage than any Prime Minister I can think of since Sir Robert Walpole.
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Tuesday 25th May 2010 09:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Get it right Fuzzball.
You didn't see anything praising Brown/Blair in my post did you? Blair turned out to be a crazed loon and Brown has screwed us all with overuse of of PFI (which the Tories invented and were going to rely on if they hadn't been kicked out). Don't know why Labour did all the control freakery shit. Let's see an end to it.
Shame that the thoroughly evil bastards have got their hands back on the tiller though. Because they're, like, thoroughly evil and all.
(Ashamed of my post pointing out Tories pissed millions away on politically motivated nonsense? Nope. Got my own reasons for posting anonymously.)
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Monday 24th May 2010 10:00 GMT Is it me?
And we get the last laugh, ching.
A lot of the ID card work was about biometric passports, mostly the relatively small amount of money required in the IT systems to cop with ID cards will probably be retained by the IT companies in penalties. The big bikkies left would be the roll out of enrolment services which may well still be needed, which would have been a lifeline to your local post office.
Any aspiring back bencher want to ask the question "How much did we actually save by canning ID cards" in about 12 months time, bet it won't be much once termination fees have been taken into account. I'll bet it's all covered up by Commercial in Confidence to save embarrassment.
Oh, and I hope that some of our negative commentators out there are in line to loose their jobs when the government cuts back on IT, because a lot of dead wood will be cut from SI IT staffing to accommodate the really good people who worked on ID cards and others, bet you hadn't thought that one through.
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Monday 24th May 2010 11:30 GMT MonkeyBot
Won't somebody think of the IT staff?
"...the really good people who worked on ID cards and others, bet you hadn't thought that one through."
The really good people will be transferred to other projects or have to find jobs in the private sector doing something useful. The fact that people are making money out of a boondoggle is no reason to keep it.
Rather than asking how much we've saved 12 months from now, ask how much we've saved 10 years down the line. Ask how much it would have cost to install card readers in every hospital, police station, job centre and every other government building where the public might interact with the state. The cost of that was never included in the Home Office cost projections.
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Monday 24th May 2010 11:30 GMT Captain Mainwaring
And the real winner will be......
I think it will be the great British public that has the last laugh here, as it happens.
It has been said that at least 29 million ID cards will have to be sold for the project to break even in financial terms. That's at least 29 million people who will now not have to stump up the cash to buy into Nu Labour's Stasi population control project. That's at least 29 million people who will not have to pay up to a £1000 pound fine should they forget to update their details with the all-surveying National Identity Register. That's at least 29 million people who will now not have to carry an ID card around with them in their wallets to show to every jobsworth and petty official on every street corner. That's at least 29 million people........ oh well, I think I could go on all day about the numerous disadvantages and problems that this socialist dystopia project would bring with it.
Whether cancelling this project saves the treasury 2 Billion pounds or 2 pence, it will be the man in the street who will be quids in once it has been passed out of law.
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Monday 24th May 2010 14:05 GMT Nanki Poo
What a strange link-up
So, by the same token we should have SS-style police in order to keep more people in employment?
I am a supporter of local post offices, but that doesn't mean I believe a liberty-infringing expensive and ultimately useless system should be implemented to save them. Dolt.
Also I seem to recall that Cameron declared a while back that any new contracts between then and him becoming PM would not be honoured, because he was making it clear that he would cancel them. I hope he sticks to it, if a company was stupid enough to take on a project which they knew full well would be cancelled, then no right mind would believe they should receive any compensation.
nK
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Monday 24th May 2010 14:05 GMT Maverick
don't stop with the IOC
dump the lot
every last stadium
every last track
every last training facility
every last 'hospitality' facility
nothing in all that Government spending that will benefit any child / athlete north of Milton Keynes
. . . and let's face it, would be worth doing to hear that whining fool Coe's reaction <evil grin>
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Monday 24th May 2010 20:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
South of Milton Keynes
Given that somewhere in the region of 25 million Britains live south of Milton Keynes, I would have thought that having lots of facilities in those areas made a lot of sense. Especially since Manchester, Birmingham, and other more northern cities have got a lot of spending from other games (like Commonwealth games etc.) and from national bodies. The North has more excellent stadia than the South already thanks to the more Northern football teams as well.
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Monday 24th May 2010 22:23 GMT John Smith 19
Oh the tragedy
In the back streets of Manchester, where *dozens* of bold "entrepreneurs" had staked their financial future on reverse engineering/copying the card, now facing *ruin*.
Won't *someone* think of the forgers?
BTW IIRC most of the actual *data* is held on the virtual database that *was* the NIR (let's make sure *that* is dismantled along with the more loonier parts of the IPS) stitched together from the data from 3 existing databases.
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Monday 24th May 2010 22:29 GMT Alex Osmond
Stupid? No, just conned.....
Have a bit of sympathy guys. Most people who bought ID cards on the basis of the information put before them by the media - that they were a more convenient, cheaper form of passport. Have a look at the publicity, and most newspaper articles outside of the likes of the Guardian, and that's all you'd see. Same for most of the IPS staff who were duped into buying one - nobody telling them about £1000 fines and lifeflong data retention. You can only make a judgement on the basis of the info presented to you (OK, you should have the gumption to look a bit deeper, but do we honestly all do that? All of the time?)
So spare some thoughts for the poor dupes.
No, the villains I want to see punished lie elsewhere. It would be a joy to see the smile wiped off the fat, smug, overfed face of James Hall (IPS Chief Exec) and his "leadership" team, by having to make a public apology for the misleading propaganda they've been pumping out.
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Monday 24th May 2010 22:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Idiot tax?
My ex almost got one for my daughter this Summer, as a "cheap passport". It would have worked out cheaper than a full passport, so she was advised to get one.
The "idiots" shouldn't really be ripped off like this, but I agree the ID evangelists who signed up just to support the scheme, deserve to lose every last penny.
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Thursday 27th May 2010 14:24 GMT Stephen Bouvier
Serves them bloody right
Frankly, this is simply a case of the dangers of early adoption of new technology.
Am I entitled to a refund from you, Dear Register Reader, because I bought Betamax or an Apple Newton? No, you say, underwrite your own stupidity. Quite right too.
These people were warned, certainly by El Reg, that the opposition parties were committed to scrapping the id card project. So let that be a lesson to them about where they get their news from in the future should they seek to argue blissful ignorance of what the Con-Dems were planning to do.
But worst of all, these people were happy to take a cheap passport, subsidised by the rest of us, and permit themselves to be used as propaganda in the war against our civil liberties and privacy.
These dimwits thought it was all about a card and appear to have been incapable of conceptualising the NIR behind the card.
So to anyone who lost 30 quid: tough! It might not have taught you to value my liberties, but hopefully it's taught you about the dangers of early adoption.
Anyone want to buy a Newton? It's hardly been used ...
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
