What would you rather spend an extra £52 million on: a huge IT project to keep tabs on innocent people or things such as more police to catch criminals? I think you can guess my answer! Today’s Guardian has the story about the bill for Labour’s ID cards scheme going up and up – and this on the button quote from my colleague, Chris Huhne:
The problem is not the ease with which we can give up sensitive personal data, but the ease with which the Home Office loses it. Costs are already spiralling out of control without a single card being issued.
If you haven’t yet, do go and sign the Liberal Democrat petition against ID cards at www.libdems.org.uk/noidcards
Lynne Featherstone 
At almost the same time the first batch of real ID cards (ignoring the non-EEA third country nationals who are about to start getting e-resident cards when given permission to live here) has been cut back. We were to have all airport air-side workers (and probably also cabin crew) given ID cards next year, but now that is downgraded to 18 month pilots (sic) at London City and Manchester airports.