Mary Fisher wrote:

You are joking I take it...?


No, I really don't think that you'll notice the cost over the rest of your
life - or even over a few weeks. Most people seem happy to pay ｣80 for a
night's entertainment - it's not difficult.

The 80 pound is not so much the issue (although in reality it will work
out at bout 30 pounds per year I would guess (id card, passport, drivers
license at 300 quid for the lot every 10 years say)), but the say 10bn
it costs to implement will represent the equivalent of a few p on the
basic rate of tax. Whether it actually turns into a few p on the basic
rate of tax, or more likely, gets hidden in some stealth tax is another
matter. However I fully expect I will notice!

I only want something I need and then, yes, I'm prepared to pay any price.

There is an important question regarding value here though. If you need
a bag of potatoes, and have the choice of two vendors offering product
of equal quality and one costs ten times the price of the other, I would
expect (all other factors being equal) you would opt for the cheaper one.

So the same logic needs to apply to ID databases. Firstly what are
your[1] needs? There may be many solutions that can meet that need; so
you need to ask:

1) does an ID database and card meet the need
2) are there ways of meeting the need equally well, that would cost
significantly less.

[1] for broader definitions of "your" to include needs of society in
general.

Look, it's going to happen at some time, it might not be in our lifetimes.
It's the way the whole world is going, I believe, whether we like it or not.
There's no point in tilting at windmills..

I am not aware of any other country that is contemplating such an
ambitious scheme as the UK proposals at the moment. It would also seem
sensible that even if you anticipate that some system of ID is
inevitable, that we delay the process enough to let someone else do the
expensive and error prone groundwork first to establish what works and
what does not.

--
Cheers,

John.

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