I "delayed" my passport application - by applying 5 years early for a new one. That way, I'm off the ID card database for the next 10 years, by which time perhaps they'll have scrapped the whole thing (or at least made it secure). I guess enough people did that for it to affect the budget! Shame they didn't get the hint.

All we need is 5.4 Bn. Ok, so if there's cost overruns, all those MPs voting for it pony up the difference. If the whole thing falls through, we get back all the dosh.

The first should be easy peasy: they did a lot of calculations on cost, so they wouldn't get it wrong, would they.

The second is to stop Blunkett's old company (the one he went to when he was kicked out of office as an MP) getting a fat paycheck and then, if it looks to be insufficient, closing the deal down.

If they did their sums correctly, no worries, eh?

Becuase it's stupidly expensive to get a new one!!

Effectively a tax on poor people choosing to travel abroad.

That people aren't renewing their passports because they don't want the biometric version and the ID card? Or that they're shocked they might have to go to a centre and be grilled by an official to prove that they are who they say they are?

Surely if more people are going on last minute holidays and discover at the last minute they've got to renew their passport, they're still going to have to renew their passport?

And if having a photo driving licence is meaning that less people need a passport as a form of ID, why exactly are the Government pushing ahead with ID cards?

/me reinforces tin foil on hat.

once EDS, Capgemini and capita have sucked the budget dry you wont be able to afford a tinfoil hat!

£5.4bn so what do we recon on the cost overrun? two times? Then there is what we need to pay to get the thing (stealth tax) and how short they'll be becouse people will be out burning their ID cards (Poll tax returns?) then there will be the breach of contract costs when the new government goes "wooah this is a crack baby we must drown it" so again I think I've talked about us getting raped by the government who is getting raped by consultants? Except in this case it's all being driven by crazy people in the police, the ones who think spending a few million quid having those stupid body scanners for a few months at Euston was a good idea. So £12 billion quid + steal tax + the fact that in the end they give up. Woohoo.

That aside from the fact that the damn thing wont work! Much like that IT for the NHS travesty, and the fucking CPA they built that piece of shit department from the ground up and the computers never worked.

O well, some rich rich consultants. DRM, Copyright snooping for ISP's and a National ID scheme. Man my ass is gonna hurt by 2012 O shit and the olympics. I may need some surgery...

Anon

I need to renew my passport but can't afford it. The price has doubled in the last 4/5 years!

It's £72 now - and the price keeps changing so often they don't even tell you the fees in the application pack - they make you check online incase they've increased it again..

As so many things require you to have photo ID it's as though they are making you want an ID card by making passports extortionate and yet vital for everyday life.

I got myself a passport a year ago, not because I'm planning on travelling abroad any time soon, but because I *might* want to in the future and I didn't want a "biomentric" one

I now have ten years to wait for the Passport/ ID card system to collapse under its own inadequacies and incompetence!

any major revamp to Government systems has ALWAYS caused chaos/delays/cost over-runs so do we really expect this to be any different?

DVLC and Passports last time are a prime example.

It's no good even having a "penalty clause" built in so the preferred company has to make things right, they will just go bust on Monday and re-open under a different trading name Tuesday, good ol' taxpayer will pick up the difference.....

"...we know there are more journeys, but we don't know if that means more people are travelling or its the same people travelling more often."

As they've been swiping my passport for years and recently taking my photo at the airport you'd think they'd be able to work that one out quite easily wouldn't you?

My only consolation is security state being constructed is run by people who are too incompetent to use the data for anything.

If you gave that information to a direct mail company you can bet your last £1 they could tell you who was travelling, how often and where to send the brouchure!

And don't forget the cost of the photos, the buggers as so damm picky about the exact position of your head, you have preactically no hope of getting a usuable set form a photo booth so you pay extra to slappy-snaps to take them so you can at least get them recooked when the first lot are rejected!

This delay they're talking about is clearly negative since lots of people (self included) have clearly renewed early to avoid being put on the register.

The new biometric passport is very pretty btw, although I hope no-one wants to add anything to the observations page; it's covered with the chip & aerial. Just need to paste some tinfoil inside the front & back covers, accidentally poke through one of the connections or microwave it. Which would be best?

As there has never been a secure smart card (ask the TV network providers) what is the point of them? I know they’ll respond but this is unhackable, again ask the TV network providers how many revisions of unhackable smartcards they have been sold. Perhaps they should look at who hacks smartcards and who are they aimed at stopping. It all seems a bit like Chip and Pin again which has no real impact on fraud but has lets the card providers off the hook.