Apparently, according to this : http://idsmart.direct.gov.uk/index.html
ID Cards are available from today for people who live in the North West of England or for 16-24 year olds in our wonderfully sparkly clean capital shitty....sorry city.
Once again this is a case of a scheme being launched before it is ready. I personally as a licensee should before now, have had a load of 'bumf' come through The Rake's door about this scheme. Surely as someone who is going to ask to see ID on a regular basis I should have been informed before I watched the local news this morning?
Personal liberty issues and my personal lack of information aside, I have some other points to make.
Firstly, Why are the cards only available in these two areas? What the hell is the point of rolling out a card that the majority of the country doesn't recognise?
Secondly, what is the reasoning between people in the North West being categorised as most in need apart from 16-24 year olds in London? Are the Government in their infinite (ahem) wisdom saying that all the people in the North West of England look as young as 16-24 year olds in London? Or is their opinion is that the Mental age is about the same? Either way if I was from the North West of England I'd be a bit put out by the comparison.
A third point that I'd like to make is that you can apparently use them as a passport in the EEA(European Economic Area) and Switzerland, what's the point of that if you can't use it in other parts of the world? You may as well have a passport. Especially as, like passports, the ID cards cost £30, personally I'd rather have a passport that could take me anywhere.
The last point I'd like to make is a question - what about all those jealous people in other parts of the green and pleasant land, why can't they have one, surely they feel aggrieved that the Nanny State doesn't deem them worthy of identification?
So Big Brother, do tell, what's the point of your latest legislative inconsistency?
4 comments:
I'm 25, so it doesn't make any difference to me, but you're right. Why shell out £30 when the only benefit of an ID card over a passport is that it's slightly easier to carry around?
Chunk.
Well i'm 35(ish) so not eligable too but why under 25's only? and why those two parts of the country only?
It's a stealth roll-out. They won't backtrack on the scheme even though most people say they don't want the cards or think they're too expensive.
Once they had to scrap plans to make them compulsory (I invoked my O'Boggle roots and got an Irish passport for the day they tried that one), the only way to introduce them and bed in the process is to step it out into smallish demographic groups.
Still, I understand the process in Manchester takes a long time, and that take-up has been around 3,000 (need to check that). When I think how many billions have been put into the scheme, and how many cards have been issued, I just roll my eyes in helpless frustration.
I guess it's a regional test to see if the whole country should adopt it? At £35 a pop I think I'd just take my passport out I think
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