Well, really!

New 'Minister for Fitness'

The population seems to be getting fat at an alarming rate. The Beeb reports that since 2003 – that's only three years ago – adult obesity has risen by 38%, according to a Department of Health report due this week. The Government is clearly worried. Fat people cost money.

So they are appointing a minister to sort it out. Not, as you might expect, someone with solid experience of the problem – such as the Fat Controller – but the comely Public Health minister Caroline Flint. One time Parliamentary Private Secretary to John Reid when he was Leader of the House, Flint is MP for Don Valley and enjoys tap dancing with the Division Belles, a troupe of Labour women MPs; not the sort of group that would welcome the Fat Controller as a member. She says that she wants people to build physical activity into their daily routines to create a healthier nation in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, although I don't think there's any suggestion that this will increase our chance of medals.

We certainly need to take more exercise – and for kids a bit more opportunity for time on the sports field and less time swotting for endless exams would help – but I'm with Conservative MP and former shadow home secretary Ann Widdecombe on this:

"You do have to ask whether the government has a big role to play in this. I think it has a role, but not the decisive role. I don't think this will be solved by government dictat."

Surely the question to ask is: why have people so suddenly started putting on so much weight? According to the charity Weight Concern, 43% of men and 34% of women were overweight in 2002 (body mass index of 25-29.9 kg/m2), while a staggering 22% of men and nearly a quarter of women were obese (a body mass index above 30 kg/m2). It's been estimated that if these trends continue, one third of all adults and 50% of all children in the UK will be clinically obese by 2020 [Health Select Committee report on Obesity, May 2004].

25 years ago, 'just' 6% of men and 8% of women were obese. Ignoring all that BMI stuff, being obese means a waist measurement typically more than 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women. Look around the average shopping mall on a Saturday and you can see that Weight Concern probably have it about right.

I hope Ms Flint will start asking the right questions, and fast.

Burglars Head for Haringey

Villains will be heading off to Haringey in North London this week as Met Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair announces that residents there are now happy to leave their front doors open and unlocked.

He said community-based Safer Neighbourhood Teams were making people feel as safe as they did 25 years ago.

Which is probably not very safe.

Metropolitan Police Authority member Damian Hockney told the Times that Sir Ian's remarks were "truly extraordinary". Neil Williams, Liberal Democrat leader on Haringey council, also said he was surprised by the comments. "Community policing has brought enormous benefits in making people safer and encouraging them to report crime. But people still need to take sensible precautions with their home security and I'm sure the police officers in that area would say that too."

Quite.

UPDATE 22.8.06: Sir Ian Blair writes to The Times to say:

I am certainly not advocating people should deliberately leave their doors open. I am, however, very encouraged that the Met’s provision of dedicated local policing teams... is engendering a sense of community in which they have less need to be fearful and hide behind locked doors.

Fair enough. If only that were tha case everywhere – both the local policing and the sense of community.

Ken Listens to Cyclists

In the latest CTC newsletter comes the good news that Ken has listened to the deluge of complains and criticism, and has decided against his plan announced a week or so ago to require London cyclists to register their bikes and display car-style number plates.

Ken's U-Turn: One week (and many complaints) after announcing his plans to force cyclists in London to have number plates, Ken Livingstone has shelved the idea. He agreed with CTC's concerns over the prohibitive cost of such a scheme and now wants to launch a 'Share the road' campaign which will encourage all road users to obey traffic regulations and advise them of the penalties for not doing so.

Nice to find some common sense still sloshing around in this crazy world.

ID? Here's My Card

We're told that ID Cards are essential. Blair says we need them to track terrorists (but he doesn't understand the technology, and why it won't track terrorists). The Home Office says we need them to prevent identity theft (but they're not listening to industry experts who say that they won't). The DWP says we need them to eliminate Benefit fraud (but they'll just make life more complicated for people who really don't need any more complication in their lives).

These things are going to cost a lot of money. Not just what the Government spends to make the cards and set up its vast, unwieldy and potentially unreliable database and communications network, but also the cost of equipping the world and his wife with fingerprint and iris scanners, which Hard Working Families will pay for through their bank charges, less interest from their building society accounts and higher prices in the shops.

Yet the ID enthusiasts are making little effort to tell us how cards will affect our everyday lives. The Identity and Passport Service has just three simplified examples on its website: Proving your Age, Collecting a Parcel, and Transferring Money. Big deal. And the most complex of these raises more questions than it answers [I'll blog about those issues later].

What we need – if this scheme goes ahead – is legislation that will compel service providers to accept the card as the only necessary proof of ID. Otherwise we are going to remain in the current absurd situation in which even hiring a white van requires a passport, driving licence and a few utility bills (plus a photo of me on the hire company's webcam, last time I hired one). If the card is as good as they say it will be, it must be accepted everywhere as full and final proof of identity. Would they dare?

GB to Profit from ID

You don't know what to believe these days. At the beginning of July the Indy was saying:

The Treasury is launching its own study into the cost of identity cards amid growing signs that Gordon Brown may abandon the scheme if he becomes Prime Minister.

Then this morning the Sunday Times reported a leaked Home Office memo suggesting the scheme could operate at a profit if they charge £8 every time someone wants to make a change, for example to record a change in name, marital status or address, which we'd be obliged to do:

According to the leaked document, which emerged after Blair spoke in defence of the scheme, these charges will enable ID cards to raise as much as £1.5 billion a year in revenue for the Treasury.

The Sunday Times added:

Blair said that whatever the technical issues, it would be "a major plank of Labour’s manifesto at the next election"... The move was interpreted as an attempt by Blair to bind Gordon Brown, his likely successor, to the scheme. It is acknowledged in Whitehall that Brown and the Treasury have reservations about the project.

But now the Indy reports that Gordon Brown is considering exploiting the commercial potential of the ID Card scheme to fund a massive expansion of the programme:

The Chancellor, far from being sceptical about the proposed identity card and database, is exploring a range of private-sector applications. He is said to be convinced that biometric ID schemes will be introduced by the private sector, regardless of government decisions.

Standardising the official ID card and any commercial schemes would drive down the cost and enable greater data sharing between police and firms. For example, police could be alerted as soon as a wanted person used a biometric-enabled cash card or even entered a building via an iris-scan door.

So not only will we face ever increasing and ultimately unbearable intrusion into every aspect of our once private lives, but that encroachment will be fuelled by Government greed as much as by their control freakery.

UPDATE: John Lettice has a decent and deeper analysis of this "daft" plan in The Register.

ID Cards "Opaque and Muddled"

The Commons Science and Technology Committee has reported on the progress of the Home Office's ID Card scheme and expressed "disappointment" with its lack of transparency. It identifies confusion among suppliers, limited consultation and a lack of confidence in the "wider community". It complains of an "inconsistent approach" to scientific evidence, and says choices regarding biometric technology have been made before trials have even started. The Committee is "sceptical about the validity of costs produced at this stage", and notes the danger of cost ceilings driving the choice of technology.

It would be a damning report on a modest project, let alone one that will – if it goes ahead – affect the lives and pockets of every person in the country for decades. The Committee's full conclusions and recommendations are available here, the main index here.

The report confirms that critical technical decisions have been made far too quickly for political reasons by ministers who don't understand the issues and can't be bothered to listen to proper independent advice from people who do. As long ago as January 2004 the prestigious Institution of Engineering and Technology (then The Institution of Electrical Engineers) warned the Home Affairs Committee:

The UK government’s National Identity Card Scheme will fail unless the requirements for the project are formalised and rigorously analysed, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has again warned. Describing the project as "high risk", the IET said that this was not the consequence of the individual technologies to be employed, but from combining them in ways that are "unproven and on such a large scale".

The MPs on the Science and Technology Committee are not lawyers or career politicians; they have previous or parallel careers that are technical, financial and academic, and we can be reasonably sure they're somewhat in touch with real life. They are:

Phil Willis (Lib Dem), Chairman	Teacher
Adam Afriyie (Con)	IT Entrepreneur and Businessman
Robert Flello (Lab)	Taxation and Finance Accountant
Jim Devine (Lab)
Dr Evan Harris (Lib Dem)	Doctor
Dr Brian Iddon (Lab)	Professor, Organic Chemist
Margaret Moran (Lab)	Director, Housing Association
Brooks Newmark (Con)	Corporate Financier
Anne Snelgrove (Lab/Co-op)	Teacher, LEA Adviser
Bob Spink (Con)	Electronics Engineer
Dr Desmond Turner (Lab)	Research Chemist, Lecturer

One area in which the S&T Committee report falls short (but perhaps they ran out of paper for their criticisms) is on presentation of the alleged benefits of the scheme to the people who will have to endure and pay for it, normally known as 'hard working families'. They do say that "the Home Office has attempted to communicate with the public", and has allegedly produced a roadshow, leaflets and a DVD – though if they have they didn't tell me. The Committee says in passing that "there is a lack of clarity regarding... the scenarios when the card might be used".

Unbelievably, Blair insisted this week that this fiasco would be 'a central plank' of Labour's next election manifesto – forgetting, perhaps, that he will not be top dog at that time (at least, that's what he said earlier...)

Terrorist Suspect on NEC

Mr. Walter Wolfgang has been elected to the Labour Party's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC). I hope he finds his seat on the committee more comfortable than the seat in the audience at last year's party conference, from which the 83-year-old was so roughly and publicly ejected after shouting a single word – "rubbish" – during Jack Straw's speech.

After his ignominious departure from the conference centre at the hands of Labour Party bully-boys, the lifelong peace campaigner was (absurdly) detained by the police under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. His election to the NEC must smell sweet.

"It was an unpleasant experience but it has woken people up to the problem of control freakery in the party and I do think this vote is partially a result of that," he said.

Mr. Wolfgang said he would use the platform to speak out against Tony Blair's policy in Lebanon and Iraq, and against nuclear weapons. He also called on the prime minister to quit immediately and said Chancellor Gordon Brown was not the right man to replace him.

Source: BBC

Blair's A-Level Priority

I'm alerted to a piece by Alice Thomson in today's Telegraph, which reports that the Blairs have requested priority treatment for their daughter's A-level results:

"Prime ministers tend to become more whimsical the longer they remain in power. But now, however, Mr Blair may have gone too far. Tony and Cherie have reportedly asked for their daughter's A-level results to be delivered a week early so that 'arrangements can be made' at Birmingham, her preferred university. Every other child taking these exams has to wait for August 17.

"Forget Lord Levy – this is the final evidence that the man at 10 Downing Street has forgotten that, in a democracy, politicians should play by the same rules as everyone else."

Tony Tops George

As Blair hones his public speaking skills ahead of his retirement career, the battle of the speechwriters intensifies. Tony has never forgiven Dubya for his State of the Union Address, in January 2002, when he spoke of the 'Axis of Evil', a term that has since been widely adopted, adapted and parodied across the world.

Now, at last, Tony knows he has a headline grabber that will show that he and his wordsmiths are not just snapping at George's heels. Speaking to an audience of 2,000 at the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles he unveiled their latest piece de resistance: the 'Arc of Extremism'.

No, it doesn't trip off the tongue quite as easily as the 'Axis of Evil', which was penned originally as the 'axis of hatred' by former Bush speechwriter David Frum before being changed to match the more theological language that has been part of the Bush brand since 9/11. But it might score more than Condi's 'Outposts of Tyranny', which upset a few countries but never quite caught on in the same way. And it has been picked up as a headline by, er, the Beeb at least.

Blair supported his submission with that "in respect of the Middle East [we must] bend every sinew of our will to make peace" line. 'Sinew' is a good word in the speechwriters' thesaurus.

But this morning the Guardian reports that "Kofi Annan's deputy at the United Nations delivered a blunt put-down to the PM... Mark Malloch Brown said the current crisis should be dealt with by France, the US, Egypt and Jordan – with the UK 'following not leading' on Lebanon."

[Thanks to Wikipedia for an excellent Axis of Evil entry]