The Ministry Of Truth

Is your partner lying dead or dying at the bottom of an embankment? Is your loved one suffering in enormous pain having been impaled by a refreshments trolley?

Well, don’t waste your time comforting them and fuck the feelings of their relatives: take a photo on your mobile and text it to the BBfuckingC for immediate broadcast as part of our sensationalist coverage on national television.

We’re the BBC and this is what we do.

On a positive note, at least Beardy Bastard Branson’s not going to get any sleep tonight.

Idiot Fogey Marcel Berlins has gone all William Rees-Mogg in today’s Guardian and predicted centrist Francois Bayrou to emerge as the next President of France, as a result of voters turning off Sarkozy and Royal in droves.

It’s a shame Berlins has backed him, as Bayrou would have made an excellent president.

Despite his apparent support, Berlins says he would be “a leader with even less charisma than the next British Prime Minister” but omits a far more pertinent fact, which is that Bayrou, like Brown, is a formidable politician and potentially a formidable head of state. Bayrou has the particular gift a lot of politicians strive for all their lives, of dressing up brutal common sense as political idealism. He is a candidate who really speaks, clearly, constructively and convincingly, for people who are sick and tired of politics.

He has been caricatured by the Sarkozy camp as “an extreme centrist” which is an imaginative way of avoiding the admission that he outflanks Sarkozy on intellect, honesty, gravitas and most importantly of all, an understanding of what France needs. He is a social liberal (unlike Sarkozy) and an economic conservative. He loathes dogma, from either left or right.

There is still a long way to go, and Sarkozy is still, it has to be said, a massive favourite. He has an enormous machine behind him and his campaign is far slicker than Royal’s. Bayrou looks to have the sympathy of the voters without necessarily being able to persuade them to part with their vote.

He is way ahead of the other two on basic intellect and suitability for the role, but that’s unfortunately less than half the story.

A piece of direct mail arrives from Country Holidays.

If your idea of holiday heaven is basking in glorious sunshine, you’ll be delighted to learn that 2007 is forecast to be the warmest year on record in the UK. So instead of just booking a holiday abroad, why not spend a few days or longer in the UK and make the most of the expected good weather.

I knew there had to be a silver lining to the cloud that is global warming: I’m glad somebody’s pointed it out to me.

Well jigger my jockstrap, but what’s this that’s just plopped into my Inbox from ‘10 Downing Street’?

The petition calling for the Government to abandon plans for a National ID Scheme attracted almost 28,000 signatures – one of the largest responses since this e-petition service was set up. So I thought I would reply personally to those who signed up, to explain why the Government believes National ID cards, and the National Identity Register needed to make them effective, will help make Britain a safer place.

Reply personally, eh? But of course. (I bet he spent literally seconds instructing a wonk to write the reply.)

The petition disputes the idea that ID cards will help reduce crime or terrorism. While I certainly accept that ID cards will not prevent all terrorist outrages or crime, I believe they will make an important contribution to making our borders more secure, countering fraud, and tackling international crime and terrorism. More importantly, this is also what our security services – who have the task of protecting this country – believe.

Would they be the same “security services” who insisted Iraq had WMD and that a Brazilian plumber was a terrorist who should be shot repeatedly in the head at point blank range, by any chance?

So I would like to explain why I think it would be foolish to ignore the opportunity to use biometrics such as fingerprints to secure our identities. I would also like to discuss some of the claims about costs – particularly the way the cost of an ID card is often inflated by including in estimates the cost of a biometric passport which, it seems certain, all those who want to travel abroad will soon need.

In contrast to these exaggerated figures, the real benefits for our country and its citizens from ID cards and the National Identity Register, which will contain less information on individuals than the data collected by the average store card, should be delivered for a cost of around £3 a year over its ten-year life.

It’s hard to believe that Mr. Tony, a lawyer, can apparently fail to differentiate between a Nectar card (taken out, carried and used voluntarily for self-gain) and a compulsory ID card. It’s a quid pro quo: I’m happy that Sainsbury’s get to know which type of tomatoes I prefer if it means I get free cinema tickets or a discount off my shopping.

But first, it’s important to set out why we need to do more to secure our identities and how I believe ID cards will help. We live in a world in which people, money and information are more mobile than ever before. Terrorists and international criminal gangs increasingly exploit this to move undetected across borders and to disappear within countries. Terrorists routinely use multiple identities – up to 50 at a time. Indeed this is an essential part of the way they operate and is specifically taught at Al-Qaeda training camps. One in four criminals also uses a false identity. ID cards which contain biometric recognition details and which are linked to a National Identity Register will make this much more difficult.

So terrorists routinely use multiple identities: as I recall, all the New York, Madrid and London bombers used their own names and we still didn’t manage to stop them. But the introduction of ID cards will apparently make the use of multiple identities much more difficult. How exactly? Constant repetition of certain words does not make them true – a bit like “Iraq” and “WMD”. Your average terrorist does not expose himself to a government any more than he has to – the whole point is not to draw attention to himself: how will ID cards change that? If the ID card is only to be used to access public services, then it will have no effect in proving ID in the public sector that runs more and more formerly public services. But if the ID card is to be used in the private sector (eg by banks and airlines to prove identity), either (a) the government is going to have to kit banks and airlines out with biometric scanners, or (b) banks and airlines will do no more with ID cards than they do now with a passport or driving licence – ie look at it and perhaps copy it but, without the means to verify it, no more – you show them a document and, absent any evident signs of tampering, they accept that it’s genuine. If (a) is true, the ID card has a far wider reach than has been publicised to date and its costs will be astronomical. If (b) is true, it’s a massively pointless exercise.

Secure identities will also help us counter the fast-growing problem of identity fraud. This already costs £1.7 billion annually. There is no doubt that building yourself a new and false identity is all too easy at the moment. Forging an ID card and matching biometric record will be much harder.

First, I’ve spent the past five years working for banks with a combined customer base of 15 million Britons: in that time I’ve come across two genuine cases of identity theft and another dozen or so suspicions that ultimately proved groundless. It exists but let’s put it in its corrective perspective.

Second, “forging a matching biometric record” is not necessary unless you wish to access a service that necessitates a biometric scan. The country can’t afford the expense associated with kitting out every GP’s surgery, A&E admissions desk, school classroom, university lecture theatre and Post Office with biometric scanning equipment and the public won’t tolerate the time they’ll spend in queues while each person is scanned and approved by such notoriously unreliable equipment. And what happens if the scanner goes on the blink? Will A&E turn away my wife if she falls and breaks her arm just because the hospital can’t verify that her iris print matches what’s on a central database?

I also believe that the National Identity Register will help police bring those guilty of serious crimes to justice. They will be able, for example, to compare the fingerprints found at the scene of some 900,000 unsolved crimes against the information held on the register. Another benefit from biometric technology will be to improve the flow of information between countries on the identity of offenders.

No, idiot. If you think I’ve committed a crime and want to fingerprint me, arrest me. Don’t infringe my civil liberties by lumping me in with thieves and killers: what are you going to do – check my fingerprint record every time a burglar or car thief leaves behind a print? And how will that work (properly) unless and until every person in the country has been fingerprinted? Surely the very last people to register for an ID card will be those criminals whose fingerprints are not yet in the system?

The National Identity Register will also help improve protection for the vulnerable, enabling more effective and quicker checks on those seeking to work, for example, with children. It should make it much more difficult, as has happened tragically in the past, for people to slip through the net.

More effective and quicker checks on those seeking to work with children? HOW? Don’t assert – prove. The Home Office has proven utterly incapable of managing the existing system for checking those working with children: how will they suddenly become better simply because an ID card has been introduced? And, again, it’s pointless unless and until holding an ID card becomes compulsory and everybody is on the register.

Proper identity management and ID cards also have an important role to play in preventing illegal immigration and illegal working. The effectiveness on the new biometric technology is, in fact, already being seen. In trials using this technology on visa applications at just nine overseas posts, our officials have already uncovered 1,400 people trying illegally to get back into the UK.

A fair point. If, that is, you believe that most illegal immigrants try to enter the UK through official channels and not (for example) by clinging to the undercarriage of an HGV on a cross-Channel ferry.

Nor is Britain alone in believing that biometrics offer a massive opportunity to secure our identities. Firms across the world are already using fingerprint or iris recognition for their staff. France, Italy and Spain are among other European countries already planning to add biometrics to their ID cards.

Hmm. Yeah. Welcome to the Netherlands.

Over 50 countries across the world are developing biometric passports, and all EU countries are proposing to include fingerprint biometrics on their passports. The introduction in 2006 of British e-passports incorporating facial image biometrics has meant that British passport holders can continue to visit the United States without a visa. What the National Identity Scheme does is take this opportunity to ensure we maximise the benefits to the UK.

Fuck that. I deliberately renewed my passport last year when it still had eight years to run precisely to avoid “facial image biometrics”. I’ll fill in the visa application next time I go to the States, thanks.

These then are the ways I believe ID cards can help cut crime and terrorism. I recognise that these arguments will not convince those who oppose a National Identity Scheme on civil liberty grounds.

Well, they’re freaky lefty weirdos, so I wouldn’t worry about them, mate.

They will, I hope, be reassured by the strict safeguards now in place on the data held on the register and the right for each individual to check it. But I hope it might make those who believe ID cards will be ineffective reconsider their opposition.

Mr. Tony, I am not reassured. And you have said nothing to make me reconsider.

If national ID cards do help us counter crime and terrorism, it is, of course, the law-abiding majority who will benefit and whose own liberties will be protected. This helps explain why, according to the recent authoritative Social Attitudes survey, the majority of people favour compulsory ID cards.

The majority of people favour capital punishment. Are they right? Come to think of it, the majority of people want Mr. Tony Blair to leave office. I’m suddenly more persuaded by the democracy argument…

I am also convinced that there will also be other positive benefits. A national ID card system, for example, will prevent the need, as now, to take a whole range of documents to establish our identity.

Er, won’t that make identity theft MORE viable, then, if the chancers only have to nick one document instead of “a whole range”?

Over time, they will also help improve access to services.

The petition also talks about cost. It is true that individuals will have to pay a fee to meet the cost of their ID card in the same way, for example, as they now do for their passports. But I simply don’t recognise most claims of the cost of ID cards. In many cases, these estimates deliberately exaggerate the cost of ID cards by adding in the cost of biometric passports. This is both unfair and inaccurate.

Not everybody has a passport. I know you find that impossible to believe, Mr. Tony, but not everybody can afford a passport and foreign holidays.  Besides, a passport is a document you assume voluntarily if you wish to travel abroad. My grandmother has managed quite well without a passport for more than 80 years and she thinks she’ll manage equally well without an ID card for the remainder of her life.

As I have said, it is clear that if we want to travel abroad, we will soon have no choice but to have a biometric passport.

I won’t travel abroad, then. Seriously. Or, if I do, I’ll apply voluntarily for the documentation I need to emigrate to a country that remembers what civil liberties are.

We estimate that the cost of biometric passports will account for 70% of the cost of the combined passports/id cards. The additional cost of the ID cards is expected to be less than £30 or £3 a year for their 10-year lifespan. Our aim is to ensure we also make the most of the benefits these biometric advances bring within our borders and in our everyday lives.

“We estimate”, “is expected to be”, “our aim”: do you spot what he did there?

Yours sincerely,

Tony Blair

“Sincerely” and “Tony Blair” in juxtaposition. As I said, constant repetition of certain words does not make them true.

OK, this is just getting silly.

Mod-rockers The Jam are to reform and tour but without frontman Paul Weller.

Bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler have not toured together in 25 years but will play a 20-date tour from 2 May, beginning in Oxford.

Mr. Iannucci, we salute you.

Am I going mad? I heard that Tony Blair thinks so. Not just me; everyone. You too. He thinks we’re all mad. Someone close to his circle told me recently that the reason Blair seems so resolute, so calm in the face of criticism, is that he thinks the media are just mad. And he confronts unpopularity with the knowledge that we, the public, are turning mad as well. The more we say: ‘He’s going mad’, the more it proves to him that we must be mad. Is that the logic of a madman?

I only mention this because I was struck by the madness of a remark Blair made last week. It was just as the High Court ruled that the government’s recent consultation with the public over what our future energy policy should be wasn’t consultative enough, and that he and his ministers would have to consult us on the policy again.

Asked if this would put on hold his plans to build more nuclear power stations, he said: ‘No. This won’t affect the policy at all. It’ll affect the process of consultation, but not the policy.’

Take a good hard look at that quote again. It’s mad. It’s based either on a belief in the possession of psychic powers so discriminating they can predict the outcome of a consultation before it happens (which is mad) or they’re based on the belief that words have no meaning other than the meaning one chooses to give them and that this meaning can change at any particular moment (which is at least three times as mad as the first example of madness).

A sane person would assume that a consultation about a decision would be part of the process of forming that decision. If you go into a shop and ask: ‘What cakes have you got?’ and the shopkeeper says: ‘Cream cakes, eclairs and a fruit flan’, then your decision about which cake to buy is affected by that process of consultation. You won’t ask for a Swiss roll, for example, because the baker’s told you he hasn’t got one.

A madman, however, would believe that ‘consultation’ need not actually mean ‘discussion’ if he doesn’t want it to be. An equally valid meaning could be ’spice’ or ‘kindergarten’ if he so chooses. So a madman (let’s call him Blair) goes into a baker’s shop and says: ‘What sort of cakes have you got, but I’m going to buy some nails.’

The baker says: ‘But we haven’t got any nails. We sell cakes.’ To which Blair replies: ‘Doesn’t matter. I’d like some nails please.’ ‘I’ve just told you,’ replies the baker, ‘I haven’t got any nails, you brain-dead knob mouth, so runt off.’

To which Blair replies: ‘Well, I’d like some snails then, please. With quails. And be sure to teach them tricks; I’m no Roger Bannister.’

And, in his head, this would all make perfect sense. Who is mad? And does it matter?

Columnist Dominic Lawson opining in The Independent, Friday 16 February 2007:

In a sane country, Bernard Matthews would be a hero… Yet Matthews is written off by the British red-top press as “Bird-flu Bernie”, while the more middle-class newspapers sneer that his mass production approach to husbandry – “cheap food for the proles” – made inevitable the sort of infection which temporarily closed down his Suffolk factory.

It’s understandable that the promoters of less intensive farming methods should make this point to journalists – apart from anything else, they stand to gain from any collapse in Bernard Matthews’ sales; but the facts about the H5N1 virus don’t fit their argument.

The countries where the virus is endemic, such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Nigeria, are ones in which poultry is kept by individuals rather than by corporations: good old subsistence farming. According to Indonesia’s chief vet, 80 per cent of households in her country keep poultry, and bird flu is rife in 30 of the nation’s 33 provinces; but in a country where 3,000 a year die from dengue fever, it’s not easy to persuade homes that the risk of keeping sick poultry is one they can’t live with.

Compare that with the images from the Matthews operation that we have seen on our television screens over the past week: if the NHS was able to achieve a similar standard of hygiene in its hospitals we would all be much better off.

Journalist Andy McSmith reporting in The Independent, Saturday 17 February 2007:

Bernard Matthews, Britain’s best-known turkey breeder, could face prosecution over lapses in hygiene at his plant at Holton, Suffolk, where thousands of birds were slaughtered last month after an outbreak of avian flu.

A government report says inspectors who visited the site in January saw gulls feeding from uncovered waste bins, carrying turkey waste away and roosting on the roof of the turkey houses.

An inspection of the infected plant showed several points where rats, mice and small birds could get in. Polythene bags of waste had been left where they could have been blown about. There were also “extensive” leaks in the ceiling, which could have allowed infection by rain.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to sell honours openly and use the money to complement the National Lottery’s good causes. To make them accessible to all we suggest a starting price of a pound a peerage.

You have until 13 March to sign up, if you feel so inclined.

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

J.R.R. Tolkien

How celebrity works, part 1307839.

Local commercial radio DJ Dale Winton becomes “famous” for presenting Supermarket Sweep on daytime ITV and being unnaturally orange.

Dale Winton goes on to prime time BBC1 and Radio 2 presentation for a few years until people briefly emerge from their collective coma to realise that Pets Win Prizes is, actually, pretty fucking shite and that he’s not doing anything that Larry Grayson did (and better) three decades ago.

So, in order to keep paying the bills, Dale Winton goes back to presenting Supermarket Sweep on daytime ITV.

And – judging by the trailer I’ve just seen – it’s actually going to be Celebrity Supermarket Sweep with such contestants as full-time celebrity show participants Vanessa Feltz and Vic Reeves (formerly a comedian, I believe).

If I weren’t currently euphoric from the fact that my redundancy pay has today hit my bank account, I’d slash my fucking wrists.