Civil servants touted ID cards to friends, family as flop loomed Civil servants were asked to encourage their family and friends to sign up for a now-defunct ID cards amid Whitehall fears the scheme would flop, confidential documents have revealed. The documents, reported today by the Daily Telegraph following a Freedom of Information Act request, show how senior officials were urged to act …
"I think they were a good idea and many people are still in favour of them," he lied.
OK, Mr Burnham, name 20,000 people who are in favour then.
Time to start making politicians put their hands in their own pockets to cover the cost of failed policies.
"Happy New Year and thanks for paying for our f***-ups. Kind regards, Your MP. You have been charged £20.00 for this letter."
Happy New Year El Reg & readers!
They preside over what has been clearly shown to be to be Britain's most embarrassing, crushing government failure and STILL can't accept the fact.
They persisted, in spite of warnings and very clear hostility from almost every source, yet won't even acknowledge that fact.
What does it take to get them to accept reality? Or is that a flat impossibility?
The Tory-Lib Dem government are trying to make the cards a totem of what our government stood for - but I think they were a good idea and many people are still in favour of them," he said. ®
Demonstrating his complete lack of understanding as to why it would and indeed did, fail..
Arse....
"The Tory-Lib Dem government are trying to make the cards a totem of what our government stood for - but I think they were a good idea and many people are still in favour of them," he said.
Yeah, I think I have a handle on the people who think it's still a good idea. Andy Burnham, and 13,200 drones persuaded to pay for the damn things. Having said that, the taxpayers contribution to this amounts to more than £22121 per card issued.......In fairness, the utter write off of 292 million quid only occurs when the tories cancel the whole wrong headed scheme, which seems to have been entirely constructed to give money to the like of EDS.
As for instructing civil servants to go out and persuade everyone they know to buy the things..... Just where the fuck do their bosses get off, have they no sense of decency ? er....... no......
This is your dear friend NAME, (I spoke to you that one time);
Anyway, let me give you the 411:
I need you to submit your fingerprints and other pertninent details to the government. I know what you're thinking, "won't they just sell them to private security firms like they usually do?". No! Well probably not, I haven't checked or anything.
Anyway, you probably ARE a criminal, otherwise you would be smart enough to work in the government like I do. (I deleted my name from the database LOL)
So in closing,
Get one of these cards you fucker.
I know where you live,
Your local MP.
"but I think they were a good idea"
No fan of the ConLibs but while fools like Burnham spout such crap Labour clearly haven't got the message and in doing so not only are they a massive fail for themselves but they're denying the country an effective opposition that we desperately need.
Until l posted a FOI request just asking how much the government expects to save on pensions by upping the pension age by a year (ie how many people who have paid into you dodgy financial scheme oh sorry TAX and NI will not collect any benefits by being unfortunate to die between the age of 65 and 66 ) Still waiting for a reply and you know that they have done the calculation before changing the law haven't they
1. We already had (and still have) a national ID scheme called "The Passport".
2. You couldn't get an ID card unless you already had a passport.
3. It was nothing more than a monumental wealth redistribution scheme (and we're not talking wealth redistribution in the direction you might expect from a Labour government).
ID in the form of a bit of plastic with a photo, name, d.o.b., a serial number and a statement that it confirms british nationality(and nothing more) isn't a bad idea-just like a driving license or a PASS logo card it would confirm age, but could also be used for travel within EU (as international regulations only allow passports or id cards to be used for this purpose). Of course it would need to be entirely voluntary.
Such scheme would be much cheaper, could even share the database with the electoral register (a few more columns) and may get some more support. Oh, perhaps they can include a qualified certificate from government root ca to make it more useful.
Wouldn't you at least consider getting it?
a) that it remains voluntary
b) that no-one has the right to stop me in the street to ask me if I'm carrying one
c) that it doesn't become more convenient to have one than not have one (.e.g, collateral requirements, opening a bank account, access to services)
d) that none of the above ever changes
until then STFU
You mean a bunch of arrogant prats who would not listen to what people were telling them, who held "consultations" which were rigged to give the answers they wanted whilst ignoring any evidence to the contrary, who pi$$ed all over people's basic rights and freedoms in a vainglorious quest for more power, who believed that the Nanny State was the best way to go and that they were going to be benevolent Big Brother watching over us because we couldn't be trusted to act responsibly on our own...???
Yes, that sounds *exactly* like what the last government stood for!
Ed Miliband said that Labour need to look at their policies and stop blaming the voters for their defeat. Looks like some people haven't got the message.
Yes Burnham, I'm looking at you.
ID cards and their control freak attitude towards security is the main reason I refuse to even consider voting for Labour until they admit publically that they acted like a bunch of power crazed despots.
So no vote from me in the foreseeable then.
Well let's see how fair that is. Labor (certainly under Blair, pretty much under Brown) stood for:-
A large database (ID Cards, Contactpoint, eBorders facial recognition to compare your photo against the whole Interpol mugshot database)on all entry ports) cure *all* social problems
Cradle-to-grave surveillance is a *good* thing
All citizens are potential criminals. It is therefor *vital* that we know *everything* about them all the time.
Enormous government IT projects (with *very* poorly developed specs and vague scope) always come in on time and budget.
Sound like ID cards are an *excellent* totem for the last Labor government.
Ahem.
Dear friends and relatives,
I am writing to you today to inform you of a necessary but regrettable action required to implement a reversal of an unforeseen oversight in the implementation of our government's policy on the Identity Card System. I am sure that you are well aware of the government's policy on the implementation of policies that have been improperly implemented, and I wish to assure the minister that his implementation of the policy implementation policy is being correctly managed and implemented, as per the policy on implementation. To this end it seems necessary that a policy of adopting informal non-standard implementation of this policy would be necessitated by this completely and totally regrettable non-implementation of the implementation policy so that this policy can be implemented as soon as is practically possible. To that end further it seems necessary that many of you may feel the need to support our minister by informally implementing a policy of informal implementation forthwith, towards said goal of implementing the informal and formal implementations of his policy by presenting yourself informally for a formal implementation of the informal policy at a convenient formal venue.
Informally yours,
Sir Humphrey Appleby pp The Minster for Administrative Affairs (and the Arts)
... or something like that.
Didn't the Labour leader say that his new policy document is a blank of piece of paper? Well this ex-minister seems to have ideas of what he wants on it already.
Quite what does it take to get through someone's thick head that they are completely and utterly wrong. Grief.
Problem is he'll still have his seat as people can only vote of parties, and not individual issues. Meanwhile I'll have to abstain due to a lack of choice...
Milliband did not have any choice about giving that chump a "job" in the current shadow cabinet because the places in the shadow cabinet are elected by the PLP. Burnham is an unreconstructed Blairite (although he would almost certainly deny it) and was undoubtedly boosted by those members of the PLP who have not quite worked out that times have changed - or, in teeth of the clear evidence, that the whole scheme was a political road accident.
So 13,200 issued cards wasted £292m? Unless my pocket calculator is malfunctioning, that is approx £22,121 - TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND QUID - for every card issued. Not exactly great value for money in a time of economic crisis was it?
It might be tempting to dismiss the punters who paid for cards as fools or dupes. But even so it is disgraceful that a government effectively sold those poor bastards worthless goods and then refused to refund them.
That creep Burnham still thinks that the failed ID card scheme was a 'good idea' eh? Perhaps he and the rest of his discredited and loathed colleagues still don't understand why we booted them out even though the only alternative was Cameron and his cronies.
Good grief, is that idiot Andy Burnham still around? Still spouting his ill-informed ideas about technologies he clearly has no understanding of?
This is the Andy Burnham who thought internet censorship on a governmental level was a good idea (think of the children!) and entirely feasible.
This is the Andy Burnham who claimed that the 'creators of the internet' (who dey? the US military?) deliberately set about to build The Internet as some kind of anarchist anti-government safe house.
The man is a fool and no importance should be attached to anything he says.
"The Tory-Lib Dem government are trying to make the cards a totem of what our government stood for..."
You were voted out of office Andy. Ask yourself if 13 years of resurrecting Stalinism might just have played a part in that downfall.
"... - but I think they were a good idea and many people are still in favour of them,"
I rather doubt your seatless, unemployable former colleagues are among them though.
Lest any of these party affiliated pundits get carried away, the same senior civil servants have ended up in the same positions following regime change. The pre-election window dressing was punted off into the long grass the week the Conservatives took power. The deal goes like this:
"If you want contributions to your election funds from mainstream government IT suppliers, we'll let you trim back on contract costs so long as you don't fundamentally tinker with the way that public sector IT is delivered. If you went strategic, as you promised in the run up to the election, that would cost us £Billions. So, play safe. We'll support your 'cuts' as long as there's no underlying threat to the revenue model that exists around perpetually disjointed, tactical public sector IT."
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