The Manchester ID Card trials were a greater disaster than previously thought
December 30th, 2010After HRH Elizabeth the second officially killed the ID Cards bill (for the indigenous people of the UK only) we now read this story from the Manchester Evening News about what was actually going on at the time of the Manchester ID Card trials.
We can infer much from this, and also extrapolate to what is happening today:
Revealed: The full shambles of the ID card trial in Greater Manchester
Civil servants were urged to sign up their own families for ID cards as the controversial scheme flopped, it can be revealed today.
Confidential reports into trials of the controversial £30 cards, obtained by the M.E.N., expose for the first time the chaos that surrounded their introduction.
The £1bn scheme was launched in Greater Manchester in November last year but proved a hugely expensive failure, with only 13,200 people signing up.
It was scrapped by the coalition government days after it came to power.
Today the M.E.N. can reveal how:
- Senior Whitehall officials were urged to email friends and relatives encouraging them to buy cards because of fears about the level of demand
- UK and overseas border guards refused to recognise the cards – with one traveller chased through an Italian airport after trying to use one as ID
- The Home Office discovered the cards could stop some credit cards from working properly
The cards – which contained fingerprint and other biometric details – were championed by the previous Labour government as a way of preventing terrorism and identity theft.
The documents highlight particular concern about low take-up by staff at Manchester Airport –
By April this year, only 15 per cent of airside workers had enrolled for a card.
Reports reveal how the airport took the unusual step of appointing a full-time ‘National Identity Card Administrator’ to drive up demand and considered a competition to promote the scheme.
The report also said: “One participant complained that the identity card interfered with other cards kept in the same wallet.”
The ID scheme – which cost £292m before it was axed – was initially championed by Labour minister as an anti-terror measure that would allow them to keep track of people in the UK.
But public pressure eventually forced them to concede that the cards should not be compulsory. Manchester was chosen to pilot the scheme but all 13,200 cards issued have now been cancelled.
Participants who forked out £30 for the documents have been told they will not get refunds.
The Home Office refused to comment on any of the problems cited in the reports
Damian Green, the home office minister, said: “The Identity Card Scheme was intrusive, bullying, ineffective and expensive.”
But Leigh Labour MP Andy Burnham, who previously oversaw the biometric cards while a Home Office minister, said: “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 be in favour of them.”
And there you have it.
only 13,200 certifiably insane signed up for the ID Card; we knew that the uptake was very small, but what we did not know was that senior Whitehall officials were urged to email friends and relatives to encourage them to buy the cards because demand was so small.
We did not know that UK border guards did not recognize the cards. That is just completely ABSURD.
The staff at Manchester Airport, bless them, held fast and refused to knuckle under, with only 15% of them taking the card. This is highly significant, since the jobs of these people might have been on the line if they refused.
We did not know that they appointed an NIR Administrator to drive up demand.
The question here is (and you know the answer) why did we not know all of this at the time it was happening?
BBQ was there ‘reporting’ what was happening in Manchester, with its vox pops and biased articles; surely they must have known about the low uptake, the NIR Administrator and the ridiculous scene of a man not having his ID Card at the borders of ‘his own country’.
Its a 1000% guaranteed fact that the BBC was aware of all of this and did not report it. We at BLOGDIAL know for a fact that they were involved in setting up NO2ID for their vile propaganda pieces; its a very safe bet that they withheld these sensational and game changing stories because they knew that if they reported them, the ID Card fiasco’s collapse would be accelerated.
Readers of BLOGDIAL know what we think of Andy Burnham. That he is still saying in public that ‘ID Cards are a good idea’ at this stage, when the Queen has just destroyed his ‘good idea’, with the entire nation galvanized against them, is simply staggering.
That man is an unrepentant, unctuous, evil little socialist. Period.
Now for the comments on this article…
Comrade Burnham would think they were a good idea wouldn’t he…moron.
Anthony Cutt (30/12/2010 at 12:42)
I like it!
£292 million later & Andy Burnham still thinks they’re a good idea?
Let me tell you something Andy: I shall probably vote Labour come the next election but not if idiots like yourself are still around.
Ivor Rash, Oldham (30/12/2010 at 12:43)
Oldham, up North, where they vote Labour, hates Burnham.
“The Tory-Lib Dem government are trying to make the cards a totem of what our government stood for”
They were. Money p****d against the wall on unnecessary, unwanted & unworkable ideas by an incompetent & inefficient government.
Anthony Cutt (30/12/2010 at 12:50)
The image has cracked; these scumbags cannot lie anymore, thanks to the internets. People have a vocabulary to defend themselves with, thanks to the internet; its a vocabulary that you will not be able to collect from any Broadsheep newspaper, the BBC, Sky or any MSM news source.
I signed up for an ID card but it got stolen.
It’s hard to type when you’ve had to saw off your fingerprints & difficult to see when you’ve had to have a cornea transplant!
NoSignOfHealthToBeWellAdjustedToASickSociety, Tameside (30/12/2010 at 13:00)
I lol’d!
Yes a lot of people are in favour of them, Sun readers and other sub normal cretins mainly.
PeteB, Hyde (30/12/2010 at 13:35)
I can feel your anger! It makes you stronger, gives you focus!
Stretch out with your hate BOY!
I’d be willing to bet that far more Guardian readers are in favour of ID cards. Personally, I wouldn’t have got one even if it had been made compulsory. I already have a passport, a driving licence and my Army ID. If they’re not enough to prove my identity, tough.
John Evans (30/12/2010 at 13:04)
When the army goes against the State, then the State is in big trouble. I have no doubt that there are more secret documents that detail revolt from the Police and the Military. We already know that BALPA came out against them unanimously. They killed this because it was offensive to everyone once the truth of how it actually works was spread virally.
But still there a number of morons in Greater Manchester who would SERIOUSLY consider voting for Andy Burnham come the next election, even in light of his absolutely obserd remarks!
Says it all…… To think the likes of him and many others in the LIE BOUR camp who still support the I.D card system beggars belief!
Red Army (30/12/2010 at 13:09)
They are truly human garbage, the whole lot of them.
You may read the rest of the comments at your leisure.
BLOGDIAL is offering £10 cash bounty for UK ID Cards; if you have one, we want to buy it from you. I am going to set them in a frame as a trophy to our victory in bringing this disgusting, immoral and vile scheme down. Email us!
Now for the extrapolation.
As you know ID Cards have been abolished only for the British; they still exist for the ‘wogs’.
What do you think the BBC is not reporting about the uptake of these Apartheid style cards by the dirty foreign invaders?
I guarantee you that the uptake of these cards amongst foreigners is even less than the uptake in the Manchester trial, and once the news of the racist nature of these cards spreads virally to all the victims of this abominable crime, you can be sure that there will be a blanket refusal to interface with the system.
ID Cards for foreigners will collapse just like the ID Cards for Brits collapsed, because if no one carries them, even the UK ‘authorities’ will not recognize them; they will be literally useless.
These racist cards will never reach critical mass, and of course, there are all the problems of an Apartheid state where millions of ‘honorary whites’ are also living unsegregated who, by law, are not required to carry an ID Card or show it upon demand.
Its a recipe for disaster of course, but it seems like the painful and expensive process has to be gone through before ID Cards can be completely eradicated for good.
A commenter gets the gist of this:
So what’s happened to the “full-time ‘National Identity Card Administrator’” now that the scheme has been scrapped and he has nothing to administrate.
I doubt he has been sacked. More likely he’s been given a new job title, a pay rise and an assistant.
ebble, manchester (30/12/2010 at 13:37)
This is what it is all about; fleecing human beings as if they were cattle, creating an ID Card ecosystem where there are guaranteed jobs for decades administrating, examining, reporting, issuing, replacing, repairing, distributing and interfacing with these diabolical cards.
But you know this!