{"id":1080,"date":"2006-02-02T10:18:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-02T10:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/02\/02\/the-home-office-liars-or-idiots\/"},"modified":"2006-02-02T10:18:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-02T10:18:00","slug":"the-home-office-liars-or-idiots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/02\/the-home-office-liars-or-idiots\/","title":{"rendered":"The Home Office &#8211; liars or idiots?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Yesterday:<\/b> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epolitix.com\/EN\/News\/200601\/5633c554-44fb-4e3d-a795-f080eb613788.htm\">the Home Office is told off for dodgy accounting<\/a> &#8211; &#8220;It is disappointing that the Home Office had not maintained proper financial books and records&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><b>Today:<\/b> the self-same Home Office that can&#8217;t keep tabs on its own accounts <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/4672622.stm\">announces wildly implausible &#8220;identity fraud&#8221; figures<\/a> designed to make ID cards look sensible: &#8220;At \u00ef\u00bf\u00bd35 per person, the estimated annual cost was greater than that of planned compulsory national identity cards, [Home Office Minister Andy Burnham] told BBC Radio 4&#8217;s Today programme.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Why, precisely, should we pay any attention to any figures the Home Office ever produces?<\/p>\n<p><b>Update:<\/b> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.qwghlm.co.uk\/blog\/?p=832\" title=\"Qwghlm - The Identity Fraud fraud\">As if by magic, an analysis of the figures appears<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;In fact, the costs to the state of fraudulent identity, where compulsory provision of a card would definitely save money &#8211; unpaid fines, police time taken in checking backgrounds, social security fraud etc. runs to a hundred million, maybe two, at best. And plenty of that might be saved if the government tightened its own security procedures, as proven in the tax credit fraud fiasco.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Go read.<\/p>\n<p><b>Udate 2:<\/b> <a href=\"http:\/\/devilskitchen.blogspot.com\/2006\/02\/andy-burnham-liar-or-fool.html\" title=\"The Devil's Kitchen - Andy Burnham: liar or fool?\">DK goes off on one<\/a> with a number of pertinent points, while <a href=\"http:\/\/bsscworld.blogspot.com\/2006\/02\/conflatio.html\" title=\"A Big Stick And A Small Carrot - Conflatio\">the Hamster<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/longrider.blog-city.com\/the_pound17bn_identity_fraud.htm\" title=\"Longrider - The \u00ef\u00bf\u00bd1.7bn Identity Fraud\">the Longrider<\/a> also lay in with numbers and such. All good stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday: the Home Office is told off for dodgy accounting &#8211; &#8220;It is disappointing that the Home Office had not maintained proper financial books and records&#8221; Today: the self-same Home Office that can&#8217;t keep tabs on its own accounts announces &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/02\/the-home-office-liars-or-idiots\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}