Get them inured when they are young:

The Blue Peter badge is back in action today as the BBC confirmed it was introducing a new identity card in an attempt to stop badges handed out by the children’s programme being traded online.

Since March, badge holders have been unable to claim free entry to nearly 200 visitor attractions after it emerged that people were buying badges on eBay for up to £70 each.

From now on, all new badge holders will be sent a personalised card along with their badge.

Only by presenting this card, which features Blue Peter’s ship logo as a hologram, can they get in free at attractions such as Legoland, London Zoo and the Eden Project.

The card allows holders to insert a photograph and is marked with an expiry date – the holder’s 16th birthday.

A BBC spokesman said the cards would be marked as property of the BBC to discourage online trade.

“If we become aware of a website selling cards we could request they close down that sale because it would be illegal,” he said.

Blue Peter’s editor, Richard Marson, said the idea for the card had come from an 11-year-old viewer, Helen Jennings, who has since won a silver badge for coming to the programme’s rescue.

Starting this week, the new cards will be sent out to the 800 people who win a Blue Peter badge each week, while past winners can get a card if they fill in a form on the BBC website.

There are estimated to be 500,000 genuine badge holders, who are allowed free entry to attractions if they are under 16. […]

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1801126,00.html

This is a clear case of social engineering being pumped out by the scum at the BBC.

If you want to sell your Blue Peter Badge and all the ‘priveledges’ that it gives you, that is YOUR BUSINESS. By tying your blue peter badge to you, nothing is lost; those badges are in circulation and so are the discounts associated with them. Selling the badges does not duplicate the number of priveledges in circlation; this is not a case of someone producing fake badges and selling them so that you can get discounted entry. If they want to limit the use of these badges, then they should RE-DESIGN THE BADGE, and not issue these superfluous, brainwashing, de-humanizing ID cards.

Typical BBC lunacy, and of course, it is the license payer’s money that is going into delivering these un-needed cards, where a simple re-design of the badge would solve their ‘problem’.

Honestly, is there no one there that can THINK?

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Insanity, NIR.