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ID cards eat up cash
• IT was disappointing to read that the real issue being discussed – the cost of implementing ID cards (and not “how much it would cost the council to update its computer system”) was lost in the article, Anti-ID councillor told to stick to the subject (October 5).
The question read by Martin Fisher (not Peter) raises an important issue which will affect everyone in Islington – that the government has yet to offer any council an indication of the costs involved in setting up the ID card scheme.
The government intends ID card reader terminals to be placed at all points of public services – doctors, dentists, libraries and so on – yet the government will not provide any funding to set up the scheme.
As a result, the installation and maintenance of expensive IT equipment, as well as the training of staff, will have to be paid for from the council’s already stretched budget.
I ask: what is more newsworthy, a scene at the council meeting or the real issue of the council’s spending money being diverted away from services such as our hospitals and schools and spent on an expensive and intrusive IT scheme that won’t work and whose only purpose is to snoop and monitor the daily lives of ordinary people.
CAROLINE DAY
NO2ID Highbury coordinator
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