Monday 16 February 2009

BALPA refuses to co-operate with ID card scheme

Well done, the British Airline Pilots Association. It has refused to co-operate with the odious National ID register, as reported in The Times. I especially enjoyed reading BALPA's clear views on the insidious methods the Government has chosen to bring in the ID cards:

"It is clear that the Government's staged introduction of biometric identity cards first to overseas students, then to migrant workers and then for aviation workers, represents a way of picking off what are seen as easy targets."

It'll be interesting to see what the Home Office chooses to do next. They can't afford to be seen to back down in the face of such a challenge to their "authority", yet they can't force airlines to sack valuable staff. So I expect that a technical pretext will be found for not requiring the airline pilots to carry the cards after all, and the department will go after another softer target first.

It is beyond me why the Government keeps on trying to introduce this scheme. The Tories and LibDems have both pledged to scrap the whole thing as soon as Labour is voted out of office, which only gives them a couple more years at most to push it through. Sadly, the stubborn and unimaginative lot currently in power are likely to waste hundreds of millions of pounds of our money on this folly before it is finally sunk.

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