Liam Byrne You're A Cunt

For those of you lucky enough not to be in England, Liam Byrne is the Home Office Immigration Minister, who can be found here holding up a wall he's just sprayed some graffiti on.

He's announced in a speech today that the Identity Card scheme will become "a great British institution" on a par with the railways in the 19th Century. That'll be the same railways that were ripped asunder by a subsequent Government (Beeching in 1961) and left to fall apart after subsequent privatisation.

Good. Fucking. God. What were you thinking man?

It gets worse! Byrne said "In 20 years time, I suspect that the National Identity Scheme will be just a normal part of British life - another great British institution without which modern life, whatever it looks like in 2020, would be quite unthinkable" as it would avoid "a proliferation of plastic, passwords and PINs".

Now call me paranoid - as some of you already do - but I'd prefer to have lots of bits of plastic, several different passwords and a selection of PINs as I'd be the one choosing the passwords and PINs. If I was stupid enough to use the same numbers or passwords, then that's my own fault if someone gets hold of my information. If the Home Office decides to encrypt all my information on one card and then someone cracks that, then I'm fucked through no fault of my own.

This would be the same Home Office that was declared "unfit for purpose" by John Reid MP only last year. The same Home Office that is, according to Phil Booth, from the anti-ID card campaign group No2ID, "the department of cock-up and cover-up. These are the last people on earth you should trust to keep your information safe."

As I have mentioned previously, I fear the Government.