Comments on: The ragged edge of technology

By: Katie

Katie — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 21:05:00 +0000

I opened up my paper on the metro the morning after the dutch nee, to find an article buried about the French plans for a national identity register, and the switch from voluntary (but necessary) photo ID cards to ones that are required and biometric.

Specifically, machine readable passports, the US-style RFID (can be read remotely – think I got the acronym wrong), the fingerprints stored electronically. In fact, everything the US and British systems call for.

I got a bit of a thrill out of the fact that I automatically swore out loud in French rather than English at this.

I keep MOVING AWAY from places with plans like this and the DAMN THINGS keep following me.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 09:46:00 +0000

I see Hewlett Packard have been whoring their proprietary National Identity System (NIS) to the national press fairly heavily. Well, I thought, if I have to be tagged like a steer, fingerprinted like a criminal, monitored everywhere I go and charged Ã‚Â£100 for the privilege, I’d rather HP engineered the system than, say, Crapita or EDShite.

And then I read that HP are implementing it, not in open source like most of their stuff, but in MICROSOFT.NET….

By: Aidan Boustred

Aidan Boustred — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 09:08:00 +0000

We had a real struggle claiming child tax credit – they lost our original app, then were completely incompetent in dealing with it. We got our money in the end (child now 18 months) – but it took 2 forms, 10 phone calls, 3 letters and a lot of aggro to get it. I had to request a replacement form about 4 times before I actually got it. (The last person said something about the design of their screen which meant people failed to click the confirmation to send).

Luckily their phone number appeared on our old phone bill (which I happened to have kept)- because they had no record of my earlier calls, and so weren’t going to back date fully because they had no record of when I started trying to get credit.

Absolutely pathetic. I thought some of the private companies I have dealt with were useless, but they took the prize by a mile.

By: Justin

Justin — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 07:45:00 +0000

Go on then. Let’s give it a go…

Actually, it’s pretty good – doesn’t drag visitors away from the site.

By: Justin

Justin — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 07:19:00 +0000

Benjamin, make your case as to why and I’ll consider it.

If I don’t like it I reserve the right to have you flogged.

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 05:37:00 +0000

Chicken Yoghurt

Great post.

Can I make a request?

Can you make your comments pop up (available with Blogger.)

By: Friendly Fire

Friendly Fire — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 17:12:00 +0000

Water Melons are the new WMD.

How many happy tax rebate bunnies voted for Labour?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 16:30:00 +0000

you’re right – look at the CSA debacle it will be a fucking shambles

By: dearieme

dearieme — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 10:51:00 +0000

We were due children’s tax credit (if I’ve got the name right): their web site said so. I applied and was turned down on the bogus grounds that we’d no children. After 20 hours of effort, I gave up. Well, some little luxury forgone; but it would be bloody hard on a family that might need the money more.

By: Baron Munchausen

Baron Munchausen — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 10:40:00 +0000

I agree with David.

The current crop of political parties are in a real turkey twizzler on this one!

The “working families tax credit” is purely a dodge to avoid raising the base tax allowance which they feel would reuslt in them raising the base rate of tax, which is politically suicidal from a tabloid point of view.

Of course it keeps armies of people behind desks and gives a nice fat contract to an incapable IT company. Lots of churn in the economy and more “salaried unemployed”. In addition, it makes YOU beholden to the government for a handout. It makes YOU ‘grateful’ that ‘nice Mr Blair’ has ‘given’ this to you, instead of you not having your money taken away in the first place. A great mechanism to make millions too scared to vote Tory in case they loose their ‘cashbacks’.

Turning to IT, such computer systems can be very very simple but on a large scale, for what is so hard about keeping your record on file and working out some sums? It is like an ant nest, but EDS or whoever try and make ONE ORGANISM be all the ants and the queen in the middle. Nature shows us how to deal with complex situations efficiently. One day we will open our eyes and see.