Pilots boycott gov ID cards
Security claims don't fly
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Airline pilots have warned the government that they will not take part in their security theatre trial of ID cards at Manchester and City of London airports.
The Home Office wants to trial the cards for airside workers at the two airports. Several UK airlines have already pointed out the dumbness of the dumb idea.
The British Airline Pilots' Association (BALPA) has now written to management at both airports to inform them that pilots would not carry the cards.
Balpa said the cards would add nothing to security and that promises from the Home Office that carrying the cards would be voluntary had already been broken.
It said: "Promises that ID cards would be voluntary have been broken... The Association says that forcing pilots to have ID cards is an affront to the people who for years have been, and continue to be at the forefront in the battle against terrorist outrages."
Balpa asked what would happen when the first staff member was sacked for not carrying an ID card. The group has also written to the government to warn of the difficulties that will ensue when pilots who refuse to register for the ID card lose their jobs.
A spokeswoman for the Identity and Passport Service said: "Identity cards will be mandatory for all airside workers, just as other pre-employment checks are today, so that the benefits from the Scheme can be realised across the aviation sector.
"We will work with each airport to agree exactly which employees would initially be subject to this requirement and how it would best be integrated into the pre-employment checking and pass issuing arrangements at that airport.” ®
COMMENTS
BBC must have missed this one...
Perhaps someone should tell them. It seems pretty bloody newsworthy to me. The Governments highly controversial ID Card Scheme is dealt a not insignificant blow by a high profile professional organisation - an organisation which it hoped would swallow this shit down and therefore be able to justify forcing it on the rest of us.
Or, could it be, possibly, at a stretch, that the BBC....brace yourselves....isn't actually anything like fair and impartial? Or, to take it one step further, is no more than a propoganda machine for this government?
No no....surely not. What was it Reith said..."inform, educate and entertain" I believe. Well, they're certainly educatin us proper init. I owe all I knows about the Wurld from the good old `beeb`. Oh yes. Its flat init, and full of terrorists who would kill you as soon as look at you. Oh and as "Sir" Ian Blair, live on UK television (GMTV, broadcast on Sunday 6th February 2005) stated “I don’t think people should distinguish crime and terrorism too easily”. Yea. Anyone see the path we are on yet? I get the feeling that more and more can every day.
We live in "interesting times", indeed.
@Simon Harpham
>>"The Ancient Greeks would have been horrified and would probably want to know why the hell anyone would want to abdicate their responsibilities like this. But then they weren't British so they probably couldn't relate to the idea that life is easier if you've got someone else to blame for your problems."
It *is* rather easier having ancient Greek-style democracy in a small city state than a decent-sized country.
Maybe even easier if you don't let your slaves or women vote.
@ Ian Bonham
> 3 Terms
> You keep electing them, you get what you ask for.
I've never voted so I've ended up with what other people asked for, and this will also be so for the majority of people because unless 100% of people vote and the incumbent gummint gets more than 50% of the vote then fewer, rather than more, people get what they asked for.
Unfortunately voting turnout in the UK is usually somewhere between 71 and 78 percent, with the last couple of elections being particularly poorly attended (between 59 and 61 percent), and the split of the vote is usually somewhere in the 40-48% range for the winners and 30-38% for the runners up - in particular, there hasn't been one general election since the war where one party has won 50% of the vote (let alone more than 50% of the vote).
(see http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk.htm for details)
Which means that there hasn't been a single government since WWII elected by the majority of the voting public, and therefore - contra your point above - the people who elected the government asked for this, but the majority of us didn't.
On top of this it should be reasonably obvious that our democracy isn't democracy at all - it's not rule by the people because the people aren't doing the business of ruling, they're just electing people to do the ruling.
The Ancient Greeks would have been horrified and would probably want to know why the hell anyone would want to abdicate their responsibilities like this. But then they weren't British so they probably couldn't relate to the idea that life is easier if you've got someone else to blame for your problems.
If you think any of the current crop of vote-sniffing poli's would do any better than Labour (new or otherwise) you've got another thing coming, but I suppose it will be nice for those that indulge in party politics (*yawn*) to be able to blame someone else for a bit.
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