Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Tuesday, 30 September 2014
Not So Smart
Don't worry. Like all other attempts at this kind of technology, under governments of whichever hue, Iain Duncan Smith's smart cards will never work.
If you're not planning to misuse other people's hard-earned money what's there to worry about?
Smart cards are very simple and they'll work. The whole of London's transport network is run exclusively on them. Not a single bus takes money any more.
No, I mean that the cards themselves just won't work, in a purely technological sense. I guarantee it.
In any case, where this kind of thing has already been tried for asylum seekers, the local churches just swap the cards for cash. Entirely openly, and apparently legally.
But they'll simply never work at all on this scale. Not in Britain. You know it.
Oh, I can. But thankfully, the technology of this will never work. It never does.
Plus, IDS has form, with his jolly wheezes, such as paying Housing Benefit to tenants instead of to landlords, that have also ended in chaos and had to be abandoned.
From Newsnight to Question Time, he is not allowed to be asked about his area of Ministerial responsibility.
He is as incompetent as Gove, the sacked-by-public-demand Education Secretary turned Chief Whip who has lost two MPs in a month.
The expertise to make card-swapping happen in every community in the country is already in place, as surely as the networks are. Those of us in and around community organising know that.
Mercifully, neither the expertise nor the networks are going to be needed on that scale, though. We are engaged, not in counter-intelligence, but in counter-idiocy.
If you're not planning to misuse other people's hard-earned money what's there to worry about?
ReplyDeleteSmart cards are very simple and they'll work. The whole of London's transport network is run exclusively on them. Not a single bus takes money any more.
No, I mean that the cards themselves just won't work, in a purely technological sense. I guarantee it.
DeleteIn any case, where this kind of thing has already been tried for asylum seekers, the local churches just swap the cards for cash. Entirely openly, and apparently legally.
But they'll simply never work at all on this scale. Not in Britain. You know it.
My church does that, a lot do in areas with this scheme. They all would if the IDS cards ever came in. Every church in the country, imagine that.
DeleteOh, I can. But thankfully, the technology of this will never work. It never does.
DeletePlus, IDS has form, with his jolly wheezes, such as paying Housing Benefit to tenants instead of to landlords, that have also ended in chaos and had to be abandoned.
From Newsnight to Question Time, he is not allowed to be asked about his area of Ministerial responsibility.
He is as incompetent as Gove, the sacked-by-public-demand Education Secretary turned Chief Whip who has lost two MPs in a month.
The expertise to make card-swapping happen in every community in the country is already in place, as surely as the networks are. Those of us in and around community organising know that.
Mercifully, neither the expertise nor the networks are going to be needed on that scale, though. We are engaged, not in counter-intelligence, but in counter-idiocy.