Order! Order!

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Yesterday, the Home Secretary announced that the government has dropped plans to make ID cards compulsory for pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports. Whoopee!

This announcement, like so many by this current government, was made through official press channels before being made to the House of Commons. This led the Shadow Immigration Minister to accuse the Home Secretary of a ‘flagrant breach’ of a ruling by the Speaker that ministerial announcements should first be made to the Commons.

You cannot argue with that, for it is right that ministerial announcements should first be made to the people who are supposed to represent us.

Given that the Tories were whispering that the new Speaker was a closet Labour supporter, it doesn’t seem that the government has given him any support.

Order! Order! Oh, please, let’s have some order!
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What Is The Point?

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You sometimes wonder if the government - and by that I mean ‘Bronco’ Brown - knows what it is doing from one day to the next. Take the ID card fiasco.

Initially, everyone in the country was going to be compelled to have one of these ID cards, but it would not be compulsory to carry it. So what was the point in bothering, one might ask, especially as each one issued so far is estimated to have cost the government (and that means us) £2,857?

The government, reacting to a national outcry but not allowing MPs to vote on the issue, decided that the scheme - except for foreign nationals - would be a voluntary one. Let me think now: the government is offering to let me buy an ID card that I don’t need, cannot use and is going to cost me £30? Thanks, but no thanks!

Then they came up with the odd idea that pilots and airside workers would be compelled to have them and that this would be ‘trialed’ with those working at Manchester and London City airports. Unions, of course, reacted sharply and the result is that yet again the government has climbed down, performed the latest u-turn and dropped the idea.

Really! What is the point of compelling or inviting people to buy an ID card that they are not compelled to carry?
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