I got a D

The farcical idea of ID cards plods on like a blind rhino in search of a watering hole.

First of all, as I'm sure you realise, I'm totally against ID cards. It just introduces a whole new dimension to the lives of self important bureaucrats, who can impress upon you their status by asking to see your ID. In France, this equates, almost, to a whole extra police force, the gendarmerie, which exists purely to stop motorists and ask to see their documents. Does this make France a safe place? Not when you consider that some of the people dressed as gendarmes and flagging down vehicles on the motorway aren't, in fact, gendarmes.

So, apologies in advance to anyone I punch in the face thinking they are a criminal looking to rob me when they ask to see ID. I also reserve the right to be extremely rude to any person who asks to see ID. Part of the job description, is what I say.

On the other hand, I'm under no illusion that this scheme will work. It's just going to be a colossal waste of money, which I applaud. It will stand with the West Coast Main Line, the Channel Tunnel, Wembley Stadium, multifarious government computer upgrades and the Millennium Dome as a monument to incompetence.

First of all, it will involve computers, which are rubbish, as we have pointed out before on these pages. So it won't work. And second of all, it seems it will involve biometrics, which also won't work. For example, the finger scanning door locks on my children's' nursery haven't once worked for me, and anyway, I can't remember by now which finger I had scanned. So I have to ring the door and ask a member of staff, which finger did I have scanned? And they can't remember either.

It's one thing to watch CSI and think you can establish identity in half an hour. In the real world, there will be an embarrassing backlog to flush the face of the most weasel-hearted government minister as questions are asked in parliament. It will make the passport office backlog, and the new teachers backlog look like poohsticks in comparison. These backlogs will be giant redwood in proportion.

And as the Reg article points out, a document in front of you with a fingerprint merely confirms that the fingerprint on the document matches the finger of the person standing in front of you. All these things will be forged.

Well, good. Eventually all forms of ID and border control will be impossible, so lets just have free movement across borders. Border controls don't stop terrorists, they just inconvenience everybody else. And when they've wasted all the money implementing the scheme, they'll be forced to make money by sacking a few thousand civil servants, and they can start with Customs and Excise. Oh,
they already started.

I wonder if anyone has made the connection that promising all these job cuts and then implementing an expensive white elephant of an ID card scheme doesn't really compute? Probably not.

So I'm not worried, it won't work, and it'll just mean lots of spending, which means pounds in pockets and job creation, albeit temporary. And because everything is the opposite of what it is, we'll all be that much more free because of its very unworkability.

By the way, when I made a face scanning identity device for my 'O' level Design Technology course in 1979, complete with primitive computer programme to measure facial reflections (due to oil in the skin, do you like butter?), it also didn't work properly. Didn't think it would, didn't care, and I got a D.