ID cards now coming to North West of England

[caveman_nige]

ID cards are to be offered to people living across the North West of England starting this month.

People living in Cheshire, Cumbria, Lancashire and Merseyside will be able to apply for cards from 4 January next year, the Home Office announced yesterday.

ID cards minister Meg Hillier said in a statement: "Today's exciting announcement is the next stage in offering voluntary identity cards to everyone living in the UK."

The extension of the scheme across the North West of England will mean the cards are now available to a further 4.3 million people.

The cards have already received a hostile reception in Liverpool, where the city council last week voted to ban any activities that would promote the cards from public buildings in the city.

The council backed a motion stating it was "opposed to the introduction of ID cards and the associated database [the National Identity Register]" and pledged to work with ID cards pressure group No2ID to "raise awareness among Liverpool citizens about the dangers of the ID card".

Cards have been available to people living in the Greater Manchester area since last month. However to date just 2,400 people - including Home Office staff - have applied for the card out of the area's total population of about 2.6 million.


Source:

http://www.silicon.com/management/public-sector/2009/12/16/id-cards-now-coming-to-north-west-of-england-39709847/

[HoTTDubbER]

you should only have 2 carry 1 of these if u dont have a driving licence , surely all my infos on there allready

just another waste of taxpayers budget money

but knowing our joke of a political party they will want u to have both

[chroma]

Deary me, this is going to lead to a big mess.

I could understand the need for a national register and id cards back in the 2nd world war, and i can even understand Churchill abolishing the cards and disolving the national register into the NHS register.

The only benifit i can see cards being nowadays is to cut down on illegal employment, if employers checked cards then only legal tax payers would be employed initialy... untill the black market really kicked off and anyone could get hold of a fake to gain employment.

I dont however buy that they'll reduce crime in any way shape or form.

The good news is that only a small ammount of people have took the idea onboard and went out and got themselves a card, just under 4000 people if the figures are to be believed.
The only way that they could become compulsory is if over 30milion of them make it to the public and people start offering incentives for them, ie: reduced vat for card carriers, less petrol tax would definately increase uptake initialy etc.

They would only be of any use in my eyes at controlling immigration though, i mean whats the point of jumping the border if you need a card to get any benifit in the uk? no card no nhs, unemployment benifit, employment etc.
but then like i said there would be money to be made from forged cards.

[ruudvandan]

I have nothing against ID cards in principle, however I do not see the benefit of having one as I already have a passport and drivers lisence. If I had neither of those, I would get one.

[HoTTDubbER]

I have nothing against ID cards in principle, however I do not see the benefit of having one as I already have a passport and drivers lisence. If I had neither of those, I would get one.

yep exactly mate if you own a driving licence all your details are allready there

the passport is exactly the same except most people dont carry that everywhere with them

if there going to introduce this they could at least make it usefull
and link it to your passport and driving licence ect

so if u got a flight but forgot the passport the id card would be fine to use as identification , or you go to rent a car and dont have the driving licence with you but they would be linked to the ID card so everything would be clear

however Gordon brown and his crew wouldn't work this one out

they will want you to carry all 3 form of id around ,and your insurance and your yearly tax details and earning together with your NHS card everywhere you go as were being governed by as Jeremy Clarkson would put it "window lickers"

i would be all for this idea IF they linked all these documents into 1 card so you could leave the important originals at home and just carry the 1 easily replaceable no fuss card , but that will never happen so screw you and your so called creative ideas mr Brown

[^^TommyTee]

what a joke ive looked into this and too qualify one of the conditions are you must be the holder of a valid uk passport so there being selective its a non starter which they will one day force into law using terrorism grounds amongst other bollox

[MarkyMarky66]

Here Here

[chroma]

yep exactly mate if you own a driving licence all your details are allready there

the passport is exactly the same except most people dont carry that everywhere with them

if there going to introduce this they could at least make it usefull
and link it to your passport and driving licence ect

so if u got a flight but forgot the passport the id card would be fine to use as identification , or you go to rent a car and dont have the driving licence with you but they would be linked to the ID card so everything would be clear

however Gordon brown and his crew wouldn't work this one out

they will want you to carry all 3 form of id around ,and your insurance and your yearly tax details and earning together with your NHS card everywhere you go as were being governed by as Jeremy Clarkson would put it "window lickers"

i would be all for this idea IF they linked all these documents into 1 card so you could leave the important originals at home and just carry the 1 easily replaceable no fuss card , but that will never happen so screw you and your so called creative ideas mr Brown

To link everything together they would simply need to link all the existing relational databases into one cohesive database, which to be fair is fairly straightforward so long as the uids and keys are different. Everything could be easily tied together with an NI number.

The problem is that one database is far more vulnerable than several, and everyone knows how difficult the government makes securing data from a single base from being leaked, disks being left on trains and the like.

[xant14]

Google have been compiling a database which 90% of us willingly contribute all our personal details for a few years now... Facebook!

[chroma]

yeah but facebook doesnt contain your ni number, your birth cert, your bank details, criminal record, tax records, ni contributions, travel destinations, pension schemes, disclosure records, credit records, biometric data and the like.

Once everything is in a central database, it would need to be hooked up to the internet for conveniance to allow it to be accesed anywhere in the EU and UK.

The terrifying thing is that if i gained access i could swap entries and effectively become someone else with a few commands, or just drop the table and make a person completely dissapear from the system making them a non entity.

This is initialy what was being planned to coencide with the ID cards, so effectively you just became an easy to track barcode.

On paper it seems like it could be a good idea, but think for a second how open to abuse it would be, if you gave me access to your card i would have a complete history of you and be able to judge soley on data that may or may not be accurate.
It would wind up like the hitchikers guide

[lincsat]

The claim was to protect against terrorism, however when you look at the fine print. If stopped by a Police officer and asked for the card, you would have 7 Days to produce it, just like your Driving License currently. The only time you would need to produce it instantly would be for receiving NHS treatment.

So basically, the terrorists can carry on with their terrorism for 7 Days, but the little old lady cannot get a Hip replacement.

However, if they are offering the cards cheap as an incentive, it may be worth getting one before they become compulsory at a cost of ?300 or whatever.