Why not just save the money to be spent under the bed, let anyone who wants to come in and stay regardless.

Why do I say that? Because I have no faith HMG will be able to deliver this (or any other IT project) on time, on budget, and actually fit for purpose. They can't do it with passports, a supposedly secure document, The ID card project (regardles if uou agree with it or not) already has cost issues, when they do supposidly run checks they are often miss the obvious and grand approval to people they shouldn't anyway and then when they are found to be illegally here they can't manage to deport them back to the country of origin.

It seems a good idea but someone in HMG will seize on it and change the scope halfway through and just make a complete pigs ear of it. And if they don't they'll probably lose the disk with the data on the day before they need to use it anyway.

Ohh! Cynical - but probably accurate

"I don't think as a key public service we would want to oblige (the use of) biometrics"

This from the same government that wants the fingerprints of everyone in the country as part of a national ID card system ?!?

Left hand to right hand... come in left hand... what are you up to...

"Homer said Project Semaphore, the forerunner of the e-Borders scheme which will eventually record extensive data on all international passenger movements, has led to 1,700 arrests."

Please remember that an arrest does not automatically lead to a conviction or even a charge brought against them.

There's a lot of people in the UK who have been arrested for the simple fact that they have gone to a mosque that others have frequented. Most of these people are not even charged - somehow we never find this out in the news.

How many of the 1700 have been charged and prosecuted?

It's just more bullshit trying to justify the huge cost we'll be paying for HM Gov(inc)'s kneejerk reactions.

It's a sales thang - where's the IT bit?

...but wouldn't something that allows you 'access to the country and the venues' be called 'passport' and 'ticket' respectively? Or am I missing summat?

I haven't been in England for a while, and I know Britain doesn't give a toss for Schengen, but this seems like taking a bit far.

"access to both the county and to the venues"

Imagine driving up the M1 and having to stop at all the border controls....

1700 arrests. If there had been a decent number of convictions, they'd've mentioned it. They didn't, so they haven't. If the arrests haven't come to trial yet, then there's no evidence either way, and the arrest numbers remain meaningless.

Allows me to clear passport control more quickly...

That's good. I can sit on the plane for longer, waiting for the folk with less photogenic eyeballs to clear *their* passport controls. Doesn't anybody ever model these things to quantify the benefits?

You don't need to answer that.

"Left hand to right hand... come in left hand... what are you up to..."

"I'm lying through my fucking teeth and praying to God that I don't get rumbled"

"Too late..."

Current passports with the RFID chip on the back cover can simply be deactivated by the document holder(s) simply placing the back cover on a hard metal surface, opening the back page, and striking the RFID chip several times with a hammer.

Instant security!!

Manchester airport Iris scanners are Crap, I enrolled and it hardly ever works for me, then I end up having to go through the normal passport control anyway!

It's just one more way for the psychotic control freaks we seem to have inadvertently let into the driving seat, to type, collate, order, enumerate and index us and generally abuse their positions and exceed their remits .. AGAIN!

Does nobody see the obvious pattern here, or is it just me?

Look, I know I'm paranoid, goes with the job, but they may really be out to get us !!

...we had not signed up to the Extended Access Control (EAC) protocol of Schengen, so why are we complying with it?

"The chip is in control."

Makes a change from the normal potatoe heads I suppose.