Film Is Finished

Nearly. We still have to mix the sound and strike the prints, but we had 3 screenings yesterday and the response was fantastic. Packed house at the Amnesty screening, and people laughed, cried and tutted angrilly in all the right places. Thanks all for coming alone - please spread the word! Cinema listings now up on listings page.

No-one will be disciplined over the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes, though this is no great surprise. However Sir Ian Blair has announced that they will be pressing charges on Mr Menzes for getting blood on the policeman's boots. Still the finest moment in the Menezes affair was when Richard Littlejohn wrote in his liberal column that the guy basically deserved it for being an iillegal immigrant.

The Cost of ID Cards

We would never question the government’s sense of timing when it comes to bad news but it seems almost uncanny that once again on a day when most news cameras are busy pointing in one direction, bad news should be released in another. This time it is the news that the projected total costs of the ID card scheme has risen to £5.55 billion. This is despite some clever accounting, which means that they will no longer be including any of the costs accrued by the Foreign Office (estimated to be £510 million). It’s interesting that even though these figures are supposed to be released by the 9th May at the latest, the Home Office found that they were unable to do so until the day that Tony Blair announced his departure.

While others may doubt the sincerity of this government when it comes to the timing of its announcements we in the Taking Liberties office believe that all Home Office staff were taken hostage for the past month and have therefore been entirely incapable of releasing this news on any day until yesterday. They have been making pitiful excuses about why they were unable to release the report only because they are too modist to tell the truth which is that they fought off these darstardly attackers armed only with a stapler, a hole punch and some biros (fortunately civil servants are big fans of Macgyver).