Friday 02 March 2007 10:33 pm
Planning your holiday£ Don't leave it too late to get your passport. Islington and Finsbury residents who apply for new passports after March 26th will have to travel to an 'enrolment' centre to face an intrusive interview for the passport which should be our right as citizens. The cost has already gone up to at least £66, with further steep price rises to come †the basic price once ID cards are introduced is going to be at least £93. There will be massive queues at weekends or you will have to use up your precious holiday time just to get your passport. And it gets worse: the UK ID & Passport Service estimates 1 in 4 will have to cancel their travel plans, because they do not get a passport in time. Young people who are getting their first passport are first in line for the new interviews - and if they miss out, the whole family suffers.
It's yet another example of control freakery and stealth taxes from the Labour government. The new passport interview will be used to collect personal information about you, and share it with strangers, even if you have done nothing wrong. This has nothing to do with protecting our safety or making our lives easier. The Government seems to think putting us all on a database is the answer to all society's problems from terrorism to traffic congestion. Given the failure rate of Government IT projects, you think they would know better by now! The Government is already wasting £97,000 a day on the expensive, illiberal ID card scheme. They should scrap it and use the money to pay for more police officers - a much more practical way to fight crime.
But there is an alternative. By applying for your passport
BEFORE 26th March, you can protect yourself, and send a message to the Government. Everyone over 16 should renew their passport now to avoid this pointless and expensive bureaucracy. You can renew at any time (see www.renewforfreedom.org), regardless of how long your passport has to run.
I'm renewing my passport early and I urge others to do the same, but hurry - there's just one month left!
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