It's Still All In Dodgy ID Database

ID cards have bitten the dust in a whisper of lies, as the government clears the decks of controversy on the sinking ship. But only the compulsory plastic goes on the scrap heap. The sinister database, which lies at its heart, is sneaking in through the backdoor.

Determined the poisoned chalice of the home office won't be his graveyard, new home secretary, Alan Johnson, slipped in the scrapping of the compulsory ID card almost as an afterthought.

At a stroke, the government's hugely expensive and highly controversial scheme now joins the doomed Royal Mail sell-off and Trident left in limbo, as the fag-end government throws policies on the back burner in the run up to the election to take off the heat.

A welcome retreat but only half a U-turn here for the man who would be leader of Mandy's Party. The sinister database behind the scheme is left unscathed with moves to use passports to push in the scheme through the backdoor.

Johnson has left himself wide open to attack from Tories, LibDems and civil liberties groups with the most costly and controversial part of the scheme, the national identity database, alive and kicking civil liberties where it hurts most.

The big issue with ID cards was never about the cards themselves, it was the issue of compulsion and the massive database lurking in the background snooping around.

A database which has become a disturbing feature of the Big Brother state and the unrelenting quest for control over the individual.

Plans to make the cards compulsory have been dropped. Plans to foist the cards on airside workers and some pilots have been scrapped in the face of threatened industrial action.

The lame excuse that the cards would be a powerful weapon in the fight against terrorism? Forget it - that was a "mistake" anyway, blurted out a beaming Johnson.

But it's business as usual for the £5 billion project. Now entirely voluntary and a complete waste of taxpayers cash.

The Tories say they will kill off the cards and delete the database.

For all Johnson's politicking trying to win over support, he’s offered nothing to grass roots members who hate his guts as a Blair prop.

But what he has offered on a plate is a big stick for the Tories to beat the boys from the New Labour brand and renewed vigour for campaigners fighting for an end to the disgrace of the database.

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Smiffy's Iffy ID Card Con

Punters can pop down to the shops and hand over their precious identity at £60 a pop in a harebrained scheme by the disposable homes secretary fighting a rearguard action over despised ID cards. For the second day on a trot, the two homes secretary is all over the media like a rash, rolling out the £5 billion pounds wasteful white elephant in Manchester in a toxic mix of coercion and Big Sister knows best.

What have the good people of Greater Manchester ever done to deserve such a fate? The Orange Party smells a rat and wonders where the stench is coming from.

Fighting for her political future or just the fall-guy for deluded Brown's half-baked scheme? Probably a mixture of both.

In a criminal act of lunacy, Smith reckons people will be queuing up to give their fingerprints and a face scan at the local post office and pharmacy while "out doing the shopping". Charging £60 for the privilege of having your identity disappear down an IT black-hole.

So much for a squeeze on public spending. Given the bleak state of the economy any sane person would think scrapping ID cards just makes sense. 

But what do you expect with a bunch of morons in charge. If there was ever a silly scheme which highlighted New Labour's wasteful years and the sinister surveillance of Big Brother society, ID cards take the biscuit. 

But it's a case of better get in quick and make it damn difficult to scrap. Both Tories and LibDems have united to condemn Smith's costly and unnecessary folly, calling for the £5 billion farce to be scrapped, joined by sane back-bench Labour MPs and former home secretary David Blunkett.

To scrap a disliked, discredited and distasteful white elephant now would expose the failure of a decade of deceit and force arrogant ministers to finally admit maybe the economy isn't all that well placed to weather the recession depression. 

Add to that the difficulty of prising out the slick IT cronies now with their feet firmly under the cushy home office table and it's a case of Carry On Regardless Down The Kazi. 

ID cards for UK citizens are totally voluntary of course. Just tell that to air-side workers at Manchester airport where pilots need a security pass to get on the right side of the tarmac - but need an ID card to get the pass. Pilots unions say their members are effectively being forced into signing up for the cards.

Trailing national ID cards in one city is nonsense. Abandon this farcical folly, scrap the whole thing, save the country a fortune and salvage some scrap of civil liberties.

The Orange Party has always wondered how Jackboot Jacqui suddenly popped up out of the blue to be given the poisoned chalice of the home office. But showing off only her slim majority with no chance of holding onto her seat, she's ideally placed to do Brown and Balls dirty work without fear she could upstage the dynamic duo.

Second homes expenses fiddles, hubby's penchant for taxpayer porn, G20 police thugs and Gestapo tactics to stick the boot into Her Majesty's opposition, who'd want to be home secretary? 

The hapless home secretary has probably only got a month left in the job before Jackboot Jacqui is booted out by Brown and his side-kick Balls shoehorned into her place. Best to get those nasty ID cards up and running and out of the way before 'smearing' Balls is handed the reins for an easier ride.

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It's All In The Billion Pounds Dodgy Databases

More than £100 billion is set to be wasted on scary dodgy databases over the next five years, with a quarter of them illegal, while the government admits it hasn't a clue just how many are 'all in the database'. 

In a stark warning of minister's obsession with a surveillance society, a scathing report claims a quarter of all the databases are illegal and should be scrapped. 

Dissing the report and burying his head in the sands of smug arrogance, justice minister, Michael Wills, rejected the report, saying although it will be examined, it is a headline with no argument behind it. "What the report doesn’t do is show the advantages of these databases," he added.

And therein lies the problem for those concerned about this Big Brother intrusion from both big government and big organisations. Over the last decade the government has spawned a devil's child of databases to control our lives. 

Calls to scrap those databases only scratch the surface. The databases are an end result. What needs to change is the cultural obsession with collecting and collating information about people. 

Massive IT projects are big business. In an effort to  control our lives, a massive magic bullet of Big Brother databases sprang up without any checks or any nod to privacy, just waiting to be lost or stolen. 

Now the UK has become the "most invasive surveillance state and the worst at protecting privacy, of any Western democracy", according to the report from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.  

As officials "struggle to control billions of records of our most personal details', more than £16 billion a year is spent on public sector IT and another £105 billion will be spent over the next five years but less than a third of such projects ever succeed.

It's said there are thousands of databases operating and the government does not even know the precise number. 

At the heart is an ominous warning about the relationship between the individual and the state over the last decade with a government hell bent on control. 

A decade of arrogance of an elected government which believes it is the state rather than just a wheel in its cog. 

Taxpayers' vote in a government which then forces people to stump up billion of pounds on big government databases which are used - to spy on the very taxpayers and families who forked out the cash in the first place. 

The study reviewed 46 flagship databases and gave just a handful the green light. 

Singled out for stinging criticism are 11 particularly bad eggs,  including the DNA database, the National Identity Register which will store personal information linked to ID cards, the children's ContactPoint national index of all children in England and the NHS Detailed Care Record.

Another 29 databases were on dodgy dubious grounds, meaning they have "significant problems and may be unlawful".

And the report warns personal data is readily shared between public bodies or to help snoop on the public with virtually no control.

Phil Booth, National Coordinator of NO2ID campaign puts it well: "Government now sees collecting and collating information about the people as a primary function: snooping is the first resort. To stop the database state, the surveillance reflex must be changed."

BBC News is not alone in flagging up the report and appalling obsession with government databases. But that's the same BBC which scares the pants off everyone, with a series of chilling licence adverts warning "It's all in the database".

Nothing will change until ministers wake up and realise distasteful databases demolish what little trust there is left in government and the public becomes increasingly fed up and angry at the way databases are harnessed by government to snoop on people and stigmatise them.

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Tory Campaign Gimmicks Might Just Work

The Tories have announced the latest populist gimmick to latch onto the public mood, with a campaign to save our pubs. The leftish Orange Party has signed up to all of them!

'Save The Great British Pub' is part of a whole raft of campaigns tapping into public issues. Scratch away the cynicism and these campaigns are a stroke of genius.

A campaign to Save the Great British Pub is just the latest mini campaign to feature on conservatives.com now with a round-up of campaigns in a convenient portal to sign up and have a rant about saving post offices, scrapping ID cards, honest food labelling. All the old favourites are there. Indeed the portal box even has space for a couple more. 

Save the Great British Pub. What sensible person wouldn't agree with that?  But joining a campaign and feeling part of a movement is one thing. Having hard realistic policies to back up the fine words is quite another. 

Dig deeper and each campaign is linked to a reasoned background argument and more importantly with what the Tories would do about it. 

That's the really clever bit. They are drawing attention to the problems. Bringing them all together in one campaign portal is a stroke of genius. This is the key - it's part of an election manifesto and of course your email address can be used for future political marketing. Remember it's all in the database. 

There is a danger this could degenerate into a LibDem local government issues-style politics of cracked pavements and dog shit. But what and where is the alternative? 

Only the death throes of a discredited New Labour government riddled with sleaze and in-fighting in what Oborne today acidly and accuracy describes as the fag-end of a government in collapse. 

The crisis facing the British pub is indeed serious with pubs closing at a rate of knots. But the Tory campaign is dead in the water unless someone has the guts to tackle the real reason why pubs are falling by the wayside - the blanket smoking ban. Fat chance the Tories will raise their heads above the parapet on that issue so close to elections.   

What's needed is a political heavyweight to champion the cause, someone with a penchant for the occasional cigar and Real Ale. 

Whatever happened to the politically-correct misleading bleatings  about a massive increase in the pub trade as a result of the smoking ban? 

The smoking ban, supermarkets selling cheep beer and wine, high rents and price increase from suppliers, greedy shareholders in the breweries, 24 hour opening. It's all part of the pub shambles as the glorious vices of pint, a fag and packet of crisps are eroded away. 


A hell of a lot of radial policies are needed if the Tories are serious about saving pubs. 

The right way forward on any of the issues chosen by the Conservatives, from saving GPs' surgeries to pubs and Post Offices can be argued until you are blue or red in the face. 

But isn't that what politics should be all about, rather than the arrogant top down diktat imposed without a popular mandate which voters have to suffer at the moment? 

What the Tories are doing is singling out some of  the national issues that capture a public mood and at one time would be chewed over in the pub. 

How ironic then that the very place for a relaxing pint and a fag, to have a moan and put the world to right is now under threat. It's almost as if an Orwellian nanny knows best State has crept up by stealth to keep us all in our box. The Orange Party feels another issues campaign coming on. 

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Jenkins Final Plea On Liberty

Journalist and author, Simon Jenkins, was one of the first voices of reason to question the unwinnable war in Afghanistan. Many of his views have been welcomed by the Orange Party. Now he's standing down from the Sunday Times. He'll be sorely missed. 

Recently Jenkins delivered a call to trim the fat off the London 2012 Olympics - though that was in the Guardian to which he's been closely associated for a number of years. 

Now apparently he's leaving for pastures new and the National Trust but not before delivering a final plea on liberty. 

The Sunday Times has had a New Labour makeover. It is now all style and no substance. Hard edged news reporting has been sacrificed for articles more suited to a magazine than a newspaper. 

Time and again the "Insight" page, of which Jenkins was one-time editor, is back-referenced in a nostalgic throwback to the halcyon days. 

Maybe Jenkins didn't fit in with that New Look? But who will replace him? Alistair Campbell is back at Downing Street and making a big splash in today's Sunday Times Review. Now that would be too much.

Jenkin's final missive is a brilliant piece condemning both the surveillance society and Big Brother tactics of a decade of New Labour, in which he makes a farewell pleas to MPs - defend liberty. 

Home secretary, Jacqui Smith, is firmly in his sights as the article catalogues recent GCHQ moves to tap into all mobile phone conversations, through ID cards, NHS computer records and 42 days detention.

The closing remarks of Jenkins are worth recording in full. He states they are a lesson for MPs. The Orange Party would contend they are a lesson for us all. 

"The war on terror has been a wretched blind alley in British political history. It has revealed all that is worst in British government – its authoritarianism, its sloppiness and its unaccountability. Yet restoring the status quo ante will be phenomenally hard.

"In all my years of writing this column, from which I am standing down, I have been amazed at the spinelessness of Britain’s elected representatives in defending liberty and protesting against state arrogance. They appear as parties to the conspiracy of power. There have been outspoken judges, outspoken peers, even outspoken journalists. There have been few outspoken MPs. Those supposedly defending freedom are whipped into obedience. I find this ominous."

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Quick, Slip In Another Climb-Down

42 days, secret inquests and Sats. The climb-downs are coming thick and fast along with soaring inflation. With ministers thinking they're on a roll after Brown bankrolled the banks, it's a good time to bury bad news for the government but good news for schoolkids and civil liberties.

After the Lords booted out 42 days detention, Brown couldn't risk sticking to his guns nor could he lose face and throw in the towel. So up popped home secretary, Jacqui Smith, with the odd 'bill but no bill' solution. Totally bizarre - but Brown fudge won the day. 

Then the government dropped plans, in the same counter-terrorism bill, to order inquests to be held in private using the old chestnut of "on the grounds of national security."

The Oxfordshire coroner was clearly getting up the nose of the government as time and again he publicly blasted the MoD and ministers for equipment failures during inquests into Iraq and Afghanistan troop deaths. 

The solution was simple - just keep them all secret then no one would be any the wiser. 

42 days and the secret inquests have bitten the dust for now. But neither will go away for good. Popping the champagne is too early. It should be put on ice, which is what's happening with these deeply unpopular measures.

42 days will return in some form or other when the government feels there is a politically less risky climate. Another bill is already in the pipeline. There are plans to include those secret inquests in a bill on coroners reforms.

Now, instead of scrapping himself, schools minister, Ed Balls, is to scrap Sats tests for 14 year-olds in England, following this summer's marking shambles.

All this on a day where, back in the real economy, inflation today hit home above the 5% mark, even using the government's own manipulated CPI figures.

What next to get buried in the dust?  How about ID cards? 

The government was playing politics with people's civil liberties the first time round and is just doing it again. Burdening children with a testing culture was playing with young people's minds. Masking the true rise in inflation, is playing with the effect on the real economy 

As has been observed elsewhere, it's all leaving a nasty taste. 

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Immigrants Used To Soften Up ID Cards

Immigrant workers and students are being stigmatised and forced to act as guinea pigs, to soften the blow of the roll-out of the government's hugely expensive and discredited £20 billion national ID card scheme. 

Home secretary, Jacqui Smith, was at the forefront of the government PR and spin today, when she unveiled the design of the new ID cards for foreign nationals, due to be introduced in November, using the lame excuse of tackling illegal immigration to justify the move.

Phil Booth, of the national No2ID campaign group, said: "The Home Office is trying to salami slice the population to get this scheme going in any way they can. The volume of foreign nationals involved is minuscule so it won't do anything to tackle illegal immigration."

Thousands of immigrant workers and students now face being branded as aliens, after being lured into the UK to work for a pittance in appalling condition in the food processing and service industries to prop up the ailing economy. Students are enticed over to study worthless courses, as a cash cow for the universities and colleges. 

What next, an emblem sewn onto their clothing? 

Liberty director, Shami Chakrabarti, said: "This week the Prime Minister said he doesn't do PR but clearly the Home Secretary wasn't listening. Picking on foreigners first is divisive politics; as costly to our race relations as our purses."

The roll-out comes hard on the heels of a string of data loss blunders, sparking fears about the security of personal data, including the loss of a memory stick containing data on thousands of prison records, by the same firm that's already been paid £135m for the ID card and visa schemes.

This huge waste of public money is co-ordinated by an army of civil servants and consultants from the firm, PA Consulting, as well as staff on secondment from the Passport Service, the Metropolitan Police and a management consultant company.

At the time of the data stick loss, Conservatives accused ministers of a "massive failure of duty", attempting to shift the blame and called on the government to urgently examine the implications of the latest fiasco for the £20 billion ID card project.

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Data Loss Sparks Fresh ID Card Fears

Fresh concerns have been raised over the government's controversial ID cards after it emerged the firm in the memory stick shambles is at the centre of the £20 billion home office scheme. 

The home office has suspend its three-year contract with PA Consulting following the loss of a memory stick containing data on 84,000 criminals.

PA Consulting was contracted by the home office last year to track offenders through the criminal justice 'JTrack' system. 

The data was not encrypted and contained names, birth dates, prison release dates and home detention curfew dates.

PA Consulting Group was awarded a development contract for the ID cards said to be worth £10 million in 2004, under the then home secretary, David Blunkett.

The same company was used by the government to set up the chaotic Criminal Records Bureau IT project.

The ID card scheme is coordinated by the Whitehall & Industry Group (WIG) which includes 39 civil servants, and 40 consultants from PA Consulting, the government's private sector 'development partner', and three on secondment from the passport service, the metropolitan police and a management consultant company.

The Telegraph has revealed that PA Consulting has been paid more than £240 million for government contracts in recent years.

This includes £100 million by the home office for the ID scheme and other work and £35 million to work on new biometric visas for the foreign office.

The Telegraph report adds: "Between 2004 and 2007 the company also picked up at least £31m from the Department for Work and Pensions, £20m from the Department for Communities and Local Government, £17m from the Ministry of Defence, £16m from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, £9m from the Department for Education and its successors and £3.5m from the Cabinet Office."

Announcing an inquiry, the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said the data stick loss was "completely unsatisfactory" and the home office had suspended its contract for the company to run the JTrack scheme. 

Conservatives have accused ministers of a "massive failure of duty", accusing them of attempting to shift the blame and say the government must urgently examine the implications of the latest fiasco for the £20 bilion ID card project.

The loss of the memory stick is the latest in a string of data blunders by government departments who have awarded massive contracts to private IT firms. 

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What Next For New Labour After Tory Triumph?

New Labour is licking its wounds. After Crewe and Nantwich, Brown and New Labour cannot survive. The Party donors are ebbing away. Power is draining away. But can New Labour dig itself out of the hole?

Brown should not survive but who replaces him? The New Labour clones are as unpopular with the people as he is. 

Even with a caretaker leader he/she will been seen as just that, a caretaker. And how long can you go on with the third leader of a government without a general election? One way is for the Labour Party to go back to its core Labour roots and values and focus on its core supporters. 

Labour can win the next general election but it would be a victory for true Labour. New Labour MPs would be the 'rebels'. The Party could elect a fighter, not a caretaker and come out fighting. Make it clear New Labour is dead (shout it from the rooftops), focus on some Big Issues, make bold decisions and come out clear and strong.

A caretaker leader cannot do too much before the general election - but they can take tough decisions. Pick them off. 

Scrap ID cards once and for all, call a referendum on the Lisbon not-a-constitution, pull all operational troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, scrap the Olympic financial fiasco, bring core strategic public utilities and services into public ownership, wage a real war on government waste by axing now the ridiculous quangos, PFI schemes, the NHS IT computer debacle and worthless IT projects. 

Conduct a forensic account of public spending, including all the spending Brown has hidden away off the balance sheet. Throw out the SpAds and consultants. Scrap the ridiculous alcohol licensing laws, and, yes, tackle immigration as a numbers issue not people. 

And so it goes on. Take your pick, there's plenty to choose from. And for goodness sake stop the robotic Newlabourspeak. Be direct and honest and speak English. 

This would be no U-turn. These once would have been Labour policies before the Party was highjacked. Signal an end to the New Labour Project. Then call the general election and fight on these issues. They may not win but they would have put up a good fight and totally wrong-foot the Conservatives.

But they won't. They can't. 

As New Labour policies fall apart and people have woken up to the sham, the Conservative strategy has been and continues to be react and ridicule, only putting forward a hard policy when it needs to. The 10p tax fiasco was a classic example. Here we saw not reaction but a real policy - cut taxes, fight the debt culture and fund public services with a purge on government waste. 

The Conservatives will now start to produce some policies and sensible real manifesto commitments. As real alternatives to New Labour.

So New Labour will limp along. If they cannot come up with the solutions then again they deserve all they get and its time to make way for someone who can.

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