Tuesday, October 18, 2005
A Tale of Two Clarkes
The biggest drawback to the Conservatives to find a new leader is that it's the Conservative party and it's supporters that pick them. So Ken Clarke is almost certainly stuffed and will just have to go back to selling cigarettes to African children for the rest of his days but David Cameron, the only other Tory that might be popular outside of the Tory party is building support. Watching this whole affair over the last week is curious, are the Tories genuinely not-to-concerned about drugs, or are they really running a 'look how magnanimous I'm being not talking about drugs and whether prospective Tory leaders have or have not taken any' campaign?
Meanwhile, as ID Cards come up yet again, with the Home Office saying the price will be £30 (and apparently not saying anything about why this cost is so different to previous estimates by both them and the LSE) and news that biometrics won't work with anyone going bald, with brown eyes, black hair or, it would seem, fingers, Charles Clarke is saying today that the information on ID Cards won't go any further than passports. I'm sure I remember his predecessor doing much the same, we'd have weeks and weeks of stories about how ID Cards would solve all our problems for us, how they'd do so many things. Then someone fairly senior would insist that the ID Cards data would be extremely limited. Then stories would leak out again about how ID Cards would cure the lame and make the blind see. But the point of this story is that ID Cards are still pointless and expensive.
Meanwhile, as ID Cards come up yet again, with the Home Office saying the price will be £30 (and apparently not saying anything about why this cost is so different to previous estimates by both them and the LSE) and news that biometrics won't work with anyone going bald, with brown eyes, black hair or, it would seem, fingers, Charles Clarke is saying today that the information on ID Cards won't go any further than passports. I'm sure I remember his predecessor doing much the same, we'd have weeks and weeks of stories about how ID Cards would solve all our problems for us, how they'd do so many things. Then someone fairly senior would insist that the ID Cards data would be extremely limited. Then stories would leak out again about how ID Cards would cure the lame and make the blind see. But the point of this story is that ID Cards are still pointless and expensive.
