Oh Happy Happy Day

Yesterday our last hope of extricating ourselves from the corrupt machine that is Europe faded. It's not completely vanished, the amendment backed by the Conservatives to insist upon a referendum to ratify the Lisbon Treaty must still be passed by the Lords, but it will be rubber-stamped. A sad day indeed, and Nick Clegg should be ashamed of himself. More ashamed should be Kenneth Clarke, John Gummer and the other Conservatives who failed to represent the people who elected them. The Lib Dem leader lost three front bench MPs who resigned in protest. And 25 Labour MPs voted against the government. Nobody won yesterday, and the public lost the most.

It's been a bad week for the government in other areas:

That whore running the Home Office has been forced into a humiliating u-turn. The ID card scheme is failing so badly (I'm overjoyed to see) that it has been delayed yet again. It appears that later this year there are still plans to roll out ID cards for foreign migrants, but the wording has changed slightly I think. I'm sure it was previously planned to roll out cards to all non-EU migrants. It looks to me like that is being bent to mean just working migrants now. This is speculation on my part, but it could be outstanding news because it means the dragon may slip through the net. She can actually apply to be British in December, which means that if further delays push the roll out further back, or the roll-out extends past Dec, that she will be exempt anyway.

And further id card delays have also been announced. It was planned to get people registered when they renew their passports from 2009. That bothered me because I can't renew mine until some time in 2010. However, it's now been pushed back to 2011, which means I think I can renew just at the last minute to avoid the scheme. Even better news, it seems that most of the population may not have to register at all if they have a passport. I was thinking of "losing" my passport at the best moment to allow me to get a replacement without having my biometric details taken. I can't easily do that however since my resident visa for Taiwan is in there and basically I need it.

According to this comment in the Telegraph, it would appear that biometric data to be stored on the id data base will no longer include iris scans. Again, this is good news, though I would prefer to see fingerprints abandoned. But you have to ask the question, how interested are the authorities in security if they are prepared to abandon the most secure means of id. I am unclear whether biometric passports will include fingerprints and/or iris scans.