HM Government has come out with their latest ballpark figures for the ID card scheme. And I smell bullshit on at least one point.

The second change is a cut in the estimated cost of producing and delivering “passports and identity cards containing a fingerprint biometric of £100m”.

So we’re expected to believe that the government has, just this once, overestimated the costs of something? Seriously? When absolutely everything that’s been done in the last 20 years has come in over budget or late?

Oh, and if it wasn’t another symptom of their supreme twattishness, I’d be impressed by the sheer brass shown by this claim:

The first change is an £85m cut because of a reduction in the forecasts for numbers of passports needed over the next decade “due to customers delaying passport renewals”.

So the fact that a statistically significant number of people are rescheduling their passport renewals to avoid being given ID cards is turned into a plus for the scheme. The brazenness of the bastards is breathtaking…