Thank God for that - looks like ID cards have been kicked into touch, or at least quietly into the long grass. Cost has to be the primary reason, between £5-6 Billion for 10 years or quite a bit more than one of the new large aircraft carriers, a snip at £4 billion which will last 40. As a small island nation, we should be capable of securing our borders and knowing who is in the country. But if you don't control the borders, what's the point of ID cards?
They are just rent-seeking legislation for the IT industry.
Now back to my original point on cost. As I wrote this morning in the Yorkshire Post, there's actually very little government money to go around in this downturn because Gordon Brown failed to build up a counter-cyclical surplus. That's why we should take a cue from the late Sir Keith Joseph (founder of the excellent Centre for Policy Studies) and this time, instead of raising taxes, use the opportunity to embrace public sector reform.
As he said in 1976:
"Monetary contraction in a mixed economy strangles the private sector unless the state sector contracts with it and reduces its take from the national income."
Amen to that !
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