Less than 1.74% of Manchester residents enquire about getting an identity card

The Manchester Evening News reports that Lord Brett, the minister responsible for the identity card rollout, has admitted that only 8,000 people in Manchester have enquired about getting a card.

This was revealed in a live webchat at the newspaper's offices.

Now, I presume that the scheme is only open to those in the city itself, which Wikipedia says has a population of 458,100.

If the scheme was open to those in the Greater Manchester Urban Area, with a population of 2,240,230 according to Wikipedia, or the county of Greater Manchester, with a population of 2,547,700, the percentage uptake would be much smaller!

A Manchester Evening News poll also found that 81% would not be taking part in the trial, but Lord Brett claims that "our research shows a majority of people support ID cards." What research?

For someone in charge of introducing the identity card scheme, Lord Brett hasn't turned up to many ID card related votes in the past. Perhaps there is a good reason for this, but I am not aware of it.

It is also interesting to read in this morning's Guardian about a privacy invasion by a network of private investigators working for news organisations which identity cards would never be able to prevent.

Join N02ID and oppose this waste of taxpayers' money during a recession on a disturbing project which will not benefit the general public.

On a related matter, David Budworth in The Times reminds us that when working out percentages, always divide the smaller number by the bigger number and multiply by 100.