As spotted on Blairwatch, the list of ID Card Processing Centres has been announced.

With a wee bit of data manipulation (many thanks to those nice chaps at mySociety for their geocoding API), here's a first cut map of the locations:

Or, take a look at the full map.

This is a first cut - there are a couple of dupes where I obviously couldn't work out which was the correct place from the lat/long. There are also a few which the API didn't return data. In both cases, I'm too lazy/it's too late at night for me to manually correct them. I'll return to it on Friday night, when I'm back at home again. Now mostly fixed up with help from Tom's eagle eyes.

So, here we have a Home Office who are failing in the management of an existing task:

Trial judge recommends the offender should be deported on sentence completion. Home Office makes a formal decision to follow that recommendation, then fails to carry it out.

(Note that the judge recommends that the offender be deported, not be considered for deportation. HMG's description is spin.)

Rectifying this requires the Home Office to simply be better at keeping records and communicating between its various Directorates (ie Prison Service tells Immigration that someone's coming to the end of their sentence. Immigration turns up on release day with a plane ticket and a taxi to LHR).

Not rocket science, is it?

But in a desperate attempt to get ahead of the headlines, Ol' Jug-ears decides that what is needed is not better implementation of existing legislation (which is more than adequate - Home Secretaries already enjoy the broadest of discretions to deport people who are non-conducive to the public good), but new, more draconian legislation.

Again.

With apologies to la Hewitt for the title.

To start slightly off centre, this week saw two major scope increases for the National ID scheme (conveniently after the legislation has passed):

1. The NIR is to function as a complete population register with cross-functional data sharing that far exceed the stated strictly limited circumstances mandate. As previously predicted by the Fiend, myself and others, this is child's play once you have foreign keys to all the government's databases stored on the Register
2. Contrary to previous promises, the Card is to store your medical info. So as well as the inevitable Civil Liberties problem here, every provider of medical services is going to need the Card Reading Kit (previously estimated by the Home Office as £4k - £6k plus connectivity for each reader workstation). Whose budget is paying for this? Can't imagine the Dept for Health is jumping at the idea.

So I'm beginning to think that maybe the best way to keep tabs on the population isn't to give each of us an ID Card, but instead to lock the lot of us up in a secure location, and then HMG will know exactly where we all are. Oh, wait...

Continues below the fold »

Yeah, it's only 3 veg beds, but it still makes me feel like a farmer.

...in times gone by, you have asked my opinion on which computer to buy. Regardless of your previous experience with malware of many and varied kinds, and your need for easily configured systems which rarely if ever go wrong, you have consistently and steadfastly ignored my considered opinion of Buy a Mac, usually citing a need to keep some ridiculously outdated piece of software (Wordstar for DOS? Hello?) and retain access to your old files.

Now, leaving aside that there are plenty of Mac solutions that read old WP formats, or even run Windows programs (albeit a bit slowly), these were always just the excuses of the fearful.

So to these fearful friends and relatives, if you really need the comfort blanket of Windows, its security holes, its virii, its botnets, its rootkits and so on, you can now wean yourself off it slowly. Buy a new MacMini.

But what about my Spyware? I hear you cry? Well worry not - if you really want to run Windows XP on that shiny Intel Mac, you now can, with BootCamp.

OK, now that the Lords and Tories have caved, and given in on the worst aspect of the ID Card scheme (guys, we told you all along: it's the Register that's worrying, not the cards), we start thinking about the next step.

Naturally, the best thing to do is to simply refuse to be registered. But if you want to have foreign holidays (and my job means that keeping a passport is not optional), this won't work forever. My current passport runs out in January 2010 — just after compulsion for both Register and Card comes into force. So I'm currently debating whether it's better to hold out entirely until then, or 'arrange' a little accident for my passport earlier, even if that means being entered onto the Register.

However, what we could (and probably should) do is remember the lessons of the Poll Tax campaign. Leaving aside all the cost and technology arguments for a moment, registering the entire adult population by 2010 is going to be fearsomely difficult to actually implement. It's just too many people to get through a relatively small number of centres. Not only are there new registrations, but if you move house, get married/divorced, change appearance significantly or lose/damage your Card, you'll need to register that change.

So let's 'help'.

Well - what a day I've had.  I was convinced that this baby was going to put in an appearance next weekend - but she chose to come early. (Well 41wks officially - but I think she wasn't due until tomorrow)