Wednesday 29 April 2009

Barbecue of the Vanities


Senior cabinet ministers are privately discussing a plan to scrap the Government's £5bn identity cards programme as part of cuts to public spending, The Independent has learnt.

The ministers believe that some "sacred cows" will have to be sacrificed in the effort to reduce Britain's debt mountain. They are raising fresh questions over the future of the ID card programme as the Cabinet faces renewed pressure to find economies beyond a promised £9bn in "efficiency savings".


According to this article in The Independent, maybe there's a silver lining to the huge cloud of debt currently hovering over the country. I'd crack open a bottle to celebrate this particular sacred cow being tossed onto the barbie (but not before checking that the Home Office haven't simply dropped the cards and adopted Blunkett's cunning plan to retain the ID database and make us all buy compulsory biometric passports).

Meanwhile, in local news, I've reluctantly had to abandon the compellingly surreal idea that Milton Keynes might really acquire a 50 metre long cow-based transgender sphinx. My - admittedly cursory - googling of Alex Wells has failed to come up with any hint that she's produced any previous sculptural works and I'm having to face the probability that I've been April fooled (even though the article was datelined April 16th). D'oh! And I so wanted it to be true...


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