What a disgrace. The ministers in charge should be sacked, for this alone. This is a disgrace and an insult to everyone who died in the Troubles. This is surrending to the IRA. The British have, literally, lost their identity.

@1: As someone living in Northern Ireland who will be expected to get an ID card (until he emigrates), and holds an Irish passport, I can merely say: err, what? Unless of course you’re equating “Irish passport holder” with “IRA member.

My take on it:

http://vpcyn.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/an-important-addition-to-the-many-plastic-cards-that-most-people-already-carry/

Silly season appears to be setting in at The Graun. Not only is this a 100% non-story, it’s ten months old (the Mail were outraged by this a full ten months ago)

Also, is Working Class Tory a parody? I can’t tell.

And a Royal Coat of Arms is so much more acceptable to citizens of Nthn Ireland with republican leanings than the union flag. Oooh, they’ll be champing at the bit to sign up for the British Govt to have all their details and be able to intrude even more into their lives. Is New lab somehow thinking that folk in NI are more pliant, dimmer and bigger suckers than elsewhere: look the design’s changed. It may still be the same horrendous idea that the rest of the UK with a brain and a conscience abhors, but hey, you’ll fall for it because of the make-over?

It’s at times like this I really feel sorry for people working in government. With a population of people absolutely desperate to be offended you just can’t win. They can put whatever pretty pictures they like on it as far as I’m concerned

Er, Doug does this mean sympathy for the ID card programme (and the database state behind it) or for the staff obliged to try an imp[lement the ill-conceived and unworkable scheme (though those down the food-chain won’t have ahd any say over the design etc anyhow)?

The absence might be deliberate: they’ll put the flag on at a later date and claim they’ve addressed public concerns over the card so they should now be compulsary.

In the meantime, anyone dumb enough to accept one of these obscene infringements on civil liberties VOLUNTARILY deserves to be fucked in the ears, by monkeys.