Cancelled Manchester ID Cards Itself

Manchester is first to get ID cards

Some minor aparatchik was shoved in front of the media this morning to announce this. It's embarrassing reading the pathetic excuses New Labour's underlings have desperately scraped together to try to justify ID cards once again.

They can now directly apply to attend appointments from November 30 to have their photograph and fingerprints taken for the £30 cards at Manchester's passport office.

Junior Home Office Minister Meg Hillier said the cards would be particularly useful for students and young people as they would "save the cost and hassle" of getting into clubs and bars.

Anyone over 16 in the city with a UK passport can apply for a card.

Ms Hillier told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Really for a lot of people it's a day-to-day convenience thing.

"For a lot of young people ... they often take their passports to prove their identity in nightclubs and bars and the Passport Service sweeps these up every week. So for a lot of people it'll save the cost and hassle of taking your passport, risking losing it and instead you've got this very convenient little credit-sized card. I've got one and it's very useful."

The ID cards are very hard to copy and are very secure, with biometric information stored on a database, she added.

"This is not a database that can be downloaded onto disks," she said.

"It's going to be held in different places so there'll be fingerprints and your picture on one database and your biographical information (on another), which is I must stress just the same as what's held by the Passport Service anyway ... and they will be linked together by another database."

The database would only be used for "serious crime issues" or identity concerns at a border.

The mini-witted former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced in May that Manchester had been chosen as the country's first idiot trial area for ID cards, and so it comes to pass.

Which is a bit funny because I'm sure I read Gordon Brown recently saying that ID cards were off the agenda.

Mind you, he said that a couple of years ago.

Could it be that he's a total fucking liar?

Up Your Wilders, Jacqui

Court rules UK was wrong to bar Geert Wilders | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal in London has ruled that Dutch rightwing politician Geert Wilders should not have been refused entry to the United Kingdom in February.

A British organisation that promotes freedom of expression, the Birkenhead Society, had brought the case on his behalf.

Via Cranmer.

Jacqui's Little Snoopers

Old news but still news: Jacqui Smith's private snoopers - The Community Safety Accreditation Scheme gets noticed by The Daily Mail (it's only been around since last year, when I blogged about it):

A growing army of private security guards and town hall snoopers with sweeping police-style powers is being quietly established, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Under a Home Office-run scheme, people such as park wardens, dog wardens, car park attendants and shopping centre guards receive the powers if they undergo training, and pay a small fee to their local police force.

One thing none of these goons can't do, however, is look after your welfare if you are being attacked. Their orders are to stay out of it and call the police. So much for community 'safety'.

And courtesy of Chicken Yoghurt - ID Cards: 10 things you might not know.

That Jacqui Smith, she's doing a really good job, isn't she?

Bring These Bastards Down NOW

The Observer headline is "Fury as Commons denied DNA vote", though the word "fury" is probably overdone, considering the supine nature of the Commons to date on any of these surveillance matters.

Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, has been warned that the government risks further damaging the public's faith in politics after it emerged that plans for the police to keep innocent people's DNA profiles for up to 12 years will become law without a Commons vote.

What this action shows is the complete contempt the government has for us and our rights. It's incredible that even in their death throes they are still arrogant enought to push this kind of legislation through.

These bastards have to be removed as soon as possible and it must be made clear to the incoming government that ALL of the authoritarian surveillance legislation introduced by Labour, from RIPA onwards, must be totally scrapped. Otherwise there will be strife.

Jacqui Pudding Face No friends

Even the cops hate Jacqui Smith: 'In out, in out.'

Jacqui Halfwit Smith

Marine Hyde calls Jacqui Smith a halfwit. Still too kind.

Jacqui Shock Least Wanted LabourList Lisbon Cock-Up

US shock-jock Michael Savage has said he will 'sue' Jaqui Smith for including him on the Home office's list of people banned from entering the UK (the so-called 'least wanted' list)*. I think he won't but it's a nice idea.

Here's peter Bowes on the BBC's Today programme. And an article in The Times and comment from View From Middle England.

Are there no limits to the talents and intellectual reach of our Home Secretary, given her love of ID cards, intrusive surveillance and desire to tell us what to do all the time? Obviously not, given that she has no talent and no intellect.

As for Derek Draper, it looks like he has been defenestrated from LabourList, according to Iain Dale.

Angels in Marble thinks the Conservatives are frightened of talking about the EU and the Lisbon Constitution. A fair comment, given that they'll be compelled to toe the line - which will include part-privatising the Post Office.



* The blacklist includes: Abdullah Qadri al-Ahdal, Yunis al-Astal, Samir al-Quntar, Stephen Donald Black, Wadgy Abd el-Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim, Erich Gliebe, Mike Guzovsky, Safwat Hijazi, Nasr Javed, Abdul Ali Musa (previously Clarence Reams), Fred Waldron Phelps Sr, Shirley Phelps-Roper, Artur Ryno, Amir Siddique, Pavel Skachevsky and Michael Alan Weiner (aka Michael Savage)
list includes:

Jacqui Porn Global Spawn Ponce

If you were married to Jacqui Smith, wouldn't you? Watch porn, I mean, not apologise. Mind you, under the new EU Data Retention directive (Intercept Modernisation) so gleefully embraced by her Jackieboots, all the details of her phone/internet bill will be recorded and stored by the ISP for government attention. So no doubt it would have leaked out at some stage anyway.

What's going on with the Dunfermline Building Society? Jim Faulds, chair of the Society appeared on Channel 4 News tonight in a pretty irate state, basically accusing the Chancellor of lying and saying that the press have been briefing against the Society. Whatever the Westminster government is up to it's all unravelling in full view.

Motor Mouth: Big Brother in Britain: as seen by others (ie Canada).

G20: those pesky foreigners won't play Gordon's game. They must all be well and truly pissed off with this guffoon's constant global poncing about.

Petard Hoisting

From today's Observer:

Mandelson presses ahead with Post Office privatisation. Toby Helm (once again) omits to mention what is driving this legislation, ie the EU.

Carole Cadwalladr explains how Jacqui Smith has been hoist by her own fart-bomb. How to turn the Police State against its own instigators. They don't like it up 'em.

Desperation of The Spawn of the Manse becoming an embarrassment. Brown 'signals an end to the excesses of 100% mortgages'. Too bloody late. How many 100% mortgages does he think have been arranged in the last six months? It's also typical New Labour spin: all words and suggestions, no action. Just shut up, you cretin.

Greek media now being targetted as part of the problem. As they are to a greater or lesser extent elsewhere...

Something I'd forgotten to blog about a month or two back: UK border controls will keep foreign artists out. Quite right; can't have these foreign arty-farty types coming here with their unLabour ideas and filthy habits.

Jacqui Hamas Wilders

I can't see this getting very far, wonderful as it sounds: Wilders to sue Jacqui Smith for banning him from UK.

Hamas accepts long-term peace deal with Israel (but then fires off a couple of missiles).

The Briefly Broadcasting Company

So, here's the run-down of tonight's six o'clock news from the Beeb:

1 the Australian bushfires
2 Gordon Brown promises 'sweeping' review of bank management: a 'review', please note (and 'sweeping' (that must have featured in the Press Release)
3 Jacqui Smith - bingo! - must have lasted all of ten seconds; blink and you missed a pointless clip of said clone getting into ministerial car; absolutely no follow-up
4 more bad weather on the way; cue pictures of sheep in snowy fields, etc
5 ghost ship Clemenceau on its way to the Northeast
6 sport
7 films
(plenty of time on the last two).

That's Why She's Called 'Home' Secretary

Jacqui Smith in home expenses row. Wonder if the BBC news will feature this?

Government to record all our travel details in and out of the UK: on BBC website, but, again, will it feature on the main news?

And just outside the EU Empire, the Swiss are to vote on foreign workers.

Baron Mandy's Antoinette Moment - Heads Off Soon

According to reports, Baron Mandelson has suggested that the striking workers at Lindsey oil refinery and other places can go and work elsewhere in Europe. I think that qualifies as a 'Let them eat cake' moment. We all know what that led to.

Jacqui Smith continues to use underhand tactics to make ID cards look acceptable: targetting schoolkids. What utter fucking scum.

British Nationalisation Refinery Schools EU Meltdown

Such is the state of meltdown in British society that the government is now intending to nationalise failing private schools.

Students have been sold a lie, according to Decca Aitkenhead. Not all universities are the same: quite.

Also in the Guardian: acknowledgement that EU regulations are at the bottom of the trouble at the Lindsey oil refinery and other places (although you have to go to the inside pages to get that).

The BBC main news last night again featured the incredibly important story about an American woman giving birth to eight children. I'm torn between which thing pisses me off the most: the fact that they give primetime coverage to this non-story or that Fiona Bruce insists on saying OCT-tu-plets instead of oct-TOO-plets. and while I'm at it, why doesn't someone at the Beeb tell Huw Edwards that 'programme' is not pronounced 'progrum'?

There's a campaign afoot to get people to cc their emails to Jacqui Smith in protest at the inplementation of the data retention bill: Telegraph. I'm not sure how well this will work given that the date for the campaign has been made public (15th June) thereby giving the Home Office full warning. However, since this government is colossally incompetent, there's no knowing what they'll do.

It needs to said again that the government has no choice but to implement this bad piece of legislation because it is an EU directive (2006/54/EC).

Miscellaneous Cockwaffle

Learning can be boring (Ofsted): anyone ever told them how dull and boring it can be teaching?

Considering how little our children are actually taught in schools these days and how 'relevant' and light their reading, it's unbelievable they find anything boring.

The Jacqui Smith Fan Club. Doh! Caught out again!

The Spawn of the Manse promises to 'create' 100,000 new jobs to beat the recession. Time for your medicine, Mr Brown.

Purnell loses pass. Plonker.

Compel, punish, fine, imprison: the true nature of New Labour revealed.

Is the EU Worried We're On To Them?

Trawling the internet for further information on the EU's hidden part in destroying the British postal system I came across this. Issued in May, presumably as a response to growing awareness that the EU is directly responsible for legislation that is resulting in the closure of British Post Offices, it's described as a 'Fact Sheet' and yet bears the odd instruction 'not to be quoted from'!

It's basically a deceitful attempt to shift blame from itself onto the British government (and, to be fair, the government is guilty - of allowing the EU to get away with this legislation and of implementing measures well before they should). Look here and here for the truth. A combination of 'liberalisation' (ie enforced competition) and restriction of subsidies is at the core of it.

For instance, if you wondered why the Post Office introduced that insane method a couple of years ago of judging the cost of postage by whether an envelope would fit a specific size 'letterbox', then here's your answer.


An article in today's Observer, 'Mandelson urged to halt Post Office Closures' by Toby Helm, talks about Labour MPs calling on Mandelson to block all further closures. Nowhere in the article does Mr Helm acknowledge the part of the EU in this mess. Possibly because he doesn't know? The idea of Mandelson, having just returned from a 4-year jolly at the EU, facing the bureaucrats down and actually doing something useful is laughable. Mr Helm seems unaware of this irony.

However, not all British journalists are as useless as Toby; Henry Porter continues to wage his lonely war against the government's destruction of our freedoms, with an article attacking that pudding-faced cretin of a Home Secretary after the 'scrapping' of the 42 days bill.