A new Parliamentary session, and yes! Another lame bundle of cobbled-together reasons from Labour about why we should all have identity cards. This time? Well, the Prime Minister says we need ID cards to "stop the soaring costs of identity theft". Wow, that's a new one. Not quite sure how it's going to stop people from rifling through bins, finding credit card and banking statements and using that information to sign up to new credit cards, gamble on the Internet, and generally spend money. Perhaps our new ID cards will include sentry guns. They'd better, considering they're going to cost the Government at least £5bn in creating the world's most complex biometric database, using all kinds of unproven technology. Oh, and they're going to cost us roughly £100 on top of that as well. Oh, and has the Government mentioned that you're going to have to fork out that sum every five years? No? Fancy that.

I spent far too much time last year talking about this, so go have a look if you want to hear my arguments against the scheme (and while I am a lefty 'identity cards will insidiously change the relationship between the state and individual much for the worse', most of my arguments are on practical grounds). There's also the No2ID site, which has a very comprehensive FAQ on the matter, along with all sorts of ideas about how to protest to Parliament about this Bill. Hopefully, with the help of a few Labour rebels, the Home Office can be sent packing once again…

Oh, and there's a report from one of the biometric trials at the Home Office's site. Iris scanning seems to be the most effective, but look at the shocking verification rates for facial and finger prints: 69% and 81%. Wonderful, a £5.5bn system that might have a 1 in 5 chance of making a verification error? *round of applause*

Also: there are around 70 proposed passport centres to be setup. Everybody needs to be scanned…it's going to take quite a while, isn't it?