I'm a politician, I'm here to help
Feeling a bit down? Got the winter blues? Headaches? Tough to shift stains on your underpants? Teeth falling out? Crooked bananas? Can't figure out how to sit in front of a VDU?
Dont worry. Help is at hand. A politician near you will sort out all your troubles. Just give him your vote and half your income and you can hear him make any promise you want. And then he will take your money and go to war withIraq.
The latest saviour of the human race is called Andy Burnham. Never heard of him? Think he has crawled out of a rock somewhere? He is going to save us all from.......ah yes, today's headline for the gullible press is fraud.
The easiest way to save the world from fraud is to shoot all the politicians. This is a simple idea which appears not to have crossed the mind of the wonderful Mr Burnham.
Mr Burnham has been slaving away in the bowels of the Home Office with his ministerial calculator and home office meadow mayonnaise machine and the result is that he has today declared that the cost of ID fraud is £1.7 billion a year.
Only a cynic would ask why he is banging on about fraud, and why today. So Count Kostov is asking why the cost of fraud is suddenly tugging at the heart strings of Mr Burnham. It appears that Mr Burnham has a little problem (he may have several, but only one of which he admits to in public): he is responsible for foisting ID cards onto the British public. And he has a problem right now: next week he has to introduce the unpopular ID card bill to Parliament.
As it happens, he has suddenly discovered that the cost of ID fraud is greater than the cost of the ID cards. Bingo! ID cards all round.
What he fails to mention is that:
a) his £1.7 billion figure is probably a gross over estimate: the Home office website itself claims that it is only £1.3 billion, and they provide precisely zero back up for their estimate of 100,000 people a year suffering ID theft.
b) ID fraud will continue, and probably even grow, despite ID cards
c) the cost of ID cards will not be the Home Office estimate, but nearly ten times as much if we are to believe the estimates produced independently by the London School of Economics.
Mr Burnham is absolutely right to identify the problem of fraud and fraudsters. He could make an immediate start on reducing the amount of fraud by going into his office, locking the door, pouring himself a stiff whisky and doing the honourable thing with the loaded revolver which the Count is happy to lend him.
Alternatively, we might be able to rely on our dear Prime Minister to walk out of Parliament at the crucial moment, fail to vote and thereby defeat his own bill, as he did with the Religious Hatred Bill last week. Duh. Not so much a case of pointing revolver at head, more a case of pointing revolver at his own foot. This is the same government that spent seven years in a hue and cry over hunting, eventually passed a bill banning hunting with the result that hunting is now more popular and just as legal as ever. Never mind, they want to assure us that they are deeply competent (even when their CSA costs £1.85 for every £1 it collects) and that ID cards will be a roaring success. Laugh? I nearly died.
Dont worry. Help is at hand. A politician near you will sort out all your troubles. Just give him your vote and half your income and you can hear him make any promise you want. And then he will take your money and go to war withIraq.
The latest saviour of the human race is called Andy Burnham. Never heard of him? Think he has crawled out of a rock somewhere? He is going to save us all from.......ah yes, today's headline for the gullible press is fraud.
The easiest way to save the world from fraud is to shoot all the politicians. This is a simple idea which appears not to have crossed the mind of the wonderful Mr Burnham.
Mr Burnham has been slaving away in the bowels of the Home Office with his ministerial calculator and home office meadow mayonnaise machine and the result is that he has today declared that the cost of ID fraud is £1.7 billion a year.
Only a cynic would ask why he is banging on about fraud, and why today. So Count Kostov is asking why the cost of fraud is suddenly tugging at the heart strings of Mr Burnham. It appears that Mr Burnham has a little problem (he may have several, but only one of which he admits to in public): he is responsible for foisting ID cards onto the British public. And he has a problem right now: next week he has to introduce the unpopular ID card bill to Parliament.
As it happens, he has suddenly discovered that the cost of ID fraud is greater than the cost of the ID cards. Bingo! ID cards all round.
What he fails to mention is that:
a) his £1.7 billion figure is probably a gross over estimate: the Home office website itself claims that it is only £1.3 billion, and they provide precisely zero back up for their estimate of 100,000 people a year suffering ID theft.
b) ID fraud will continue, and probably even grow, despite ID cards
c) the cost of ID cards will not be the Home Office estimate, but nearly ten times as much if we are to believe the estimates produced independently by the London School of Economics.
Mr Burnham is absolutely right to identify the problem of fraud and fraudsters. He could make an immediate start on reducing the amount of fraud by going into his office, locking the door, pouring himself a stiff whisky and doing the honourable thing with the loaded revolver which the Count is happy to lend him.
Alternatively, we might be able to rely on our dear Prime Minister to walk out of Parliament at the crucial moment, fail to vote and thereby defeat his own bill, as he did with the Religious Hatred Bill last week. Duh. Not so much a case of pointing revolver at head, more a case of pointing revolver at his own foot. This is the same government that spent seven years in a hue and cry over hunting, eventually passed a bill banning hunting with the result that hunting is now more popular and just as legal as ever. Never mind, they want to assure us that they are deeply competent (even when their CSA costs £1.85 for every £1 it collects) and that ID cards will be a roaring success. Laugh? I nearly died.
posted by Count Kostov at
10:27 am
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