Choose the people who are already beaten, broken, conditioned to kneeling before authority and then punish them by making whatever scant support they can access dependant on their use of this ridiculous and unwanted boondoggle.

Judging by the number of ex-forces I see living on the street struggling with all manner of issues, they don't need a digital ID, they'd get better support if somebody would be kind enough to land them on the beach at Dover from a rubber dinghy.

There's no reason we can't support both, if we scrapped money wasting bullshit like this scheme it would free up a decent amount of cash which could be used.

If the nimbys currently throwing temper tantrums about new housing schemes being built near their villages could be made to sit down and shut the fuck up that might also help.

New houses I'm not averse to, assuming they come with doctor and dental surgeries since the existing one of each to support our entire town is stretched to breaking point

(They don't)

...and fucking trees.

Most new build estates have no shade at all or shelter from the wind. They're usually on the edge of massive amounts of farmland. They are boiling in the summer and get battered in the winter.

I'm also not averse to new houses...I am averse to new blocks of flats though. It's densely populated apartment developments that cause the strain on local services, not houses. A block of flats is instantly 100+ people smack dab in a concentrated area. Houses tend to be spread out and away from the centre of town usually where there are far more services available.

The problem with dentists isn't lack of them, it's lack of regulation around prices. All of them want to be private dentists to charge the maximum amount they can...this needs to be regulated. We also need to stop dentists being setup as businesses, they should automatically be non-profits or a new type of entity entirely needs to be defined under which all private health care organisations sit in order to better regulate them and reduce costs, i.e. make them business rates exempt or heavily discount their rates. If we can't expand the NHS fast enough, then private healthcare should still be affordable for most people. The most vulnerable and critically in need folks should get priority on the NHS...

I am married to a South African and I typically go to the dentist in South Africa when I'm out there, haven't been to a UK dentist in decades, can't afford it (yeah, yeah I know, cost of flights etc etc you must be a cheapskate...most of the time flights to ZA cost us nothing because we use Avios points to get steep discounts / free tickets...it doesn't cost as much as you think it does, we go every two years)...costs a fraction of what it costs here and whilst it's not as modern as a UK dentist (a lot their kit tends to be quite old compared to here) they're just as good for checkups and hygienist visits. Usually costs me £20-30 to visit a better one. I could visit a dentist there for less though, I choose to visit a better once because it's reasonably priced...my dentist out there is British by the way.

There is a way for people to vote for / against migrant hotels without parliament. Local councils could put planning through to allow for them to be knocked down and replaced with residential housing. Planning like that has to go to a local consultation...if locals are in favour of it, the local authority can put in a compulsory purchase on the hotels to kick the incumbent landlord out and flatten them.

Legal, fair...doesn't require Unclear Starmer.

The UK hasn't given two shits about ex-forces since the 80s. What makes you think they'll start now?

Or is this just the usual, "Dey Took Are Jobs!" type comment?

I am an ex-army veteran and I am neither "beaten, broken, conditioned to kneeling before authority".

The government can stick their ID cards where the sun don't shine. Plastic or digital.

In any case I do not have a mobile 'phone of any sort and no desire to have one so as far as I am concerned this whole thing is just noise.

So just another extension to the original ID plan to stop illegal immigration, Starmer and his corrupt bunch of inept goons just can't help lying. Just come out with what you want to do, be truthful and explain it in simple truthful terms to the voters. If they like the idea, they will accept it if not, scrap it for another 50 years, don't use the usual deception, shadow tactics to enforce it as in a dictatorship.

Be truthful? Why would they want to do that?

Everybody including Starmer knows the claim that ID cards will reduce illegal migration is total, utter, bollocks. So there's other reasons that Labour grandees have been in love with ID cards for a long while. What might they be? The most logical is to link together with CCTV and facial recognition that they've already announced plans to extend nationally, the further development of the national ANPR programme already announced, the ID requirements of the "Online Safety" Act, and the extensive social media monitoring already undertaken by various government agencies, plus things like the established mass telecoms surveillance. When that's all bundled up, we're only a hair's width from a Chinese-inspired social credit system, to mute any voices that attract attention to the general incompetence, graft and dishonesty of government.

Can you really see that useless, waffling twat of a prime minister standing up and admitting "Digital ID will be fab because we'll know what every individual opinion is, we can monitor and record everything individuals put on line, where these proles go, who they communicate with, and we'll be able to muffle opinions we don't like".

Labour wants us farming turnips. It's that simple.

If they can see everything everyone does and says, nobody will take risks and progress will cease to be a thing.

If anyone needs to understand the Labour party...here it is in the form of Star Trek.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4AxM4nUz3Q

the sequel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGFxj-z0pcw

Warp cores do not explode.

The thing about illegal immigration is that the numbers involved are a lot smaller than the numbers of legal migration, but if we reduce legal migration, our "productivity" figures as a country stop growing, UK government bonds reduce in value, and the country plunges in to even deeper debt, and we stop getting poorly paid people in from other countries to do the jobs that no-one here wants to do, so some things like social care will collapse.

On the bright side, the housing market would drop massively in value, and might actually reach sane pricing levels. (For the record, I've paid off my mortgage, so my bricks and mortar "investment" would also plummet in value.)

"if we reduce legal migration, our "productivity" figures as a country stop growing"

Why? So that the resident population don't need to do either grotty low value jobs, or high value jobs they have to work hard to get the skills for?

Also, if that's actually correct, then (a) we'd have stellar growth from the net migration figures totalling about 3.5m over the past decade, and (b) to preserve our OECD beating growth rates we would need to keep migration levels up. Problem is that there's bugger all surplus housing stock, and I doubt anybody is going to assert that any public service has real long term spare capacity to absorb the 430k net immigration in 2024. So for every arrival, that creates additional aggregate needs for proportionate additional infrastructure investment in the shape of housing, education, hospitals and healthcare, transport, energy systems, emergency services and justice facilities. It is possible to muddle through to an extent avoiding these costs as long as possible (as successive governments have) but that's ultimately not sustainable, and there's already a massive suppressed demand for housing.

As a rough benchmark, for each new arrival we're talking about £150,000 of investment required, so even on the past ten years average of perhaps 300k a year, that's £45bn of infrastructure investment needed each year ought to be provided for new arrivals. And that is before services operating costs.

Sounds like they're working hard to sort out all the illegal veterans.

I'll never understand why Police, Fire, Healthcare workers, civil servants and Doctors get better pensions than veterans. Their massive pension pot should be raided to care for veterans.

I spoke to a pension advisor recently about my pension and my wifes pension...on the private pension market (me) I cannot procure a policy that is anywhere close to as generous as an NHS pension (my wife)...the pension advisor told us that we should never let go of my wifes NHS pension because it is "solid gold".

I'm not against people having amazing pension packages, but when it's impossible for the private sector to match the public sector on pensions...something is up. Either the private sector is ripping people off or the public sector is wasteful.

" Once more into the, er, breach? "

First to get an ID, Norman D. Landing.

I suspect will be more Dieppe Raid.

" The card can be used for establishing access to housing or mental health support "

Lied to try and make it acceptable to invade and destroy Afghanistan and Iraq. Now lying to make it acceptable to have this Digital ID bullshit.

No wonder people call them Liebour.

I know about the lie about Iraq but what was the lie about Afghanistan?

(Not btw that I think for one moment that we should have been there)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan_Oil_Pipeline

That doesn't stack up.

Yes, it *might* have been the reason why, but as no one was talking about it at the time when we went into Afghanistan it cannot therefore be claimed to be the lie that made it acceptable to invade and destroy Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden wasn't there.

That's a plausible suggestion except I think the US stated target was the organisation not just the man. Besides which do you/we actually know ObL was not in the country at the time when the US & friends said why they were going in?

Lies were knowingly told over Iraq II but over Afghanistan I'm not so sure.

A stealthy elimination would have been much easier and would not have caused the problems we encountered.

> I know about the lie about Iraq but what was the lie about Afghanistan?

I remember at the time the need for boots on the ground in Afganistan was considered highly overegged. Was probably more to implement some ineffable US foreign policy goal than for any real benefit to the region or to the participating NATO and other allies. There was some suggestion it was intended as a distraction from the blazen attempt by the Bush administration to loot Iraq's oil resources. Fortunately Mission very much not Accomplished.

> (Not btw that I think for one moment that we should have been there)

Not as though the UK had not been there before. Recall Dr Watson was wounded outside Kandahar (1880.)

>loot Iraq's oil

Maybe, but what was the lie that was told by Labour that made it acceptable to invade and destroy Afghanistan.

>Not as though the UK had not been there before. Recall Dr Watson was wounded outside Kandahar (1880.)

Yes indeed. The Great Game. If it hadn't have been for Dr Watson and his revolver how different the world might now look.

(And for avoidance of any doubt I'm no fan of either Labour or our involvement in Afghanistan)

Maybe if the government had a better track record with all things digital it wouldn't be so much of a push ?

>> it will be secured by the same technology in the GOV.UK One Login app

What could you be worried about!

All suppliers of government IT should be identified on the systems they produce. We want to know who they are and how much money they make from tax payers.

I run a tiny psc company. I now have to use onelogin for companies house stuff. As part of the create an account process I have to prove my I'd. My passport number wasn't good enough. I had to take my driving licence to the post office and have a photo taken.

If used for everybody it's a huge amount of unnecessary work. The passport is the gold standard.

When contracting in ROI I had a public service card. Nobody asked to see it. No app was needed.

I can't wait till One Login is hacked.

This veteran will not be getting one.

> Once more into the, er, breach?

Superb by line -->