UK ID Card Scheme Data Deleted For £400K 149
DaveNJ1987 writes "It will cost the British government only £400,000 to destroy the data for its failed ID card initiative. The data compiled by the National Identity Register, which was scrapped last year by the coalition government, will be disposed of for the relatively small sum — in government figures — Home Office minister Damian Green confirmed."
Re:Coalition Government? (Score:5, Informative)
What they call coalition government we call bipartisanship, right?
No, it's a coalition government - rule by more than one party in the same cabinet/government. Quite common in Europe, unheard of in the states (though you do have cohabitation between a president and a congress or senate hostile to them quite often).
A true coalition in the States would have (for example) Obama appointing Dick Cheney or Ron Paul as his vice-president, and working with him day to day and appointing advisers from other parties, but the systems are so different that it's hard to compare. Typically a coalition is made up of one large party and one or more small ones to make up the numbers, so in the strongly bipartisan system of the states, it's unlikely to happen.
Re:Let me do it (Score:4, Informative)
More likely they'll just delegate it to a junior civil servant who'll get drunk after work and leave it in a taxi.
Of course if you really want to destroy it just send it through the post, with a prominent label saying "FRAGILE".
Re:Coalition Government? (Score:5, Informative)
No. To have a coalition government, you need more than two parties. It is one of the outcomes when no single party manages to gain an overall majority. In this case, the largest party was the Conservatives, the second largest was Labour, and the third-largest the Liberal Democrats, with a smattering of smaller parties and independents. The government was formed by a coalition of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The Prime Minister is the head of the Conservative Party, the Deputy Prime Minister is the head of the Liberal Democrat Party, and the cabinet is made up from members of both parties. Government policy is driven by both parties, although more by the Conservatives.
Another alternative in this situation would be a minority government, where the Conservatives (with the largest bloc) attempted to form a government by themselves, but had to persuade members of other parties to vote with them or abstain for every issue they wanted passed. This is a bit fragile: last time it happened in the UK, it only lasted a few months before a vote of no confidence in the government passed, triggering a general election.