Is there no end
to the Nepotism displayed by the NuLab money grabbers. Following the scandal of
the ongoing Cash for Peerages enquiry, the Golden Arrow lobby debacle and the
Blunkett involvement in the
we now find that David Blunkett is acting as an advisor to the company that
wants to run the UK ID card scheme.
As reported in
the Observer,
The former Home Secretary took up the post for the Texas-based security firm
Entrust, which specialises in securing digital information and combating
identity theft, earlier this month. The firm already provides software for the
Spanish national ID card system and has formally registered an interest in the
British project.
Blunkett is bound
by a two-year ban on lobbying British ministers and officials from the date he
resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary in November 2005. That does not expire
until this November. His spokeswoman insisted yesterday that he would not be
working in
overseas work.
The post as chair
of Entrust's international advisory committee is declared in Blunkett's latest
entry for the Commons register of members' interests. A spokeswoman for the
Advisory Committee on Business Appointments said it had also been notified and
that it approved, subject to the two-year moratorium on lobbying in
So no doubt
Blunkett will now be working closely with unelected European Comissioner
Peter Mandelson and European Minister Geoff Hoon when he is working on European
Council business.
Andrew Pinder,
Senior Vice President, EMEA & Global Government Sales Strategy for
Entrust (Europe) Ltd, whose role is to lead our global government efforts on
projects such as the move to e-passports, national ID cards and
securing citizen identities and information.
Between October 2000 and August 2004,
Andrew was the
Prime Minister for co-ordinating the development of the knowledge economy in
the
Andrew is also a non executive director of
United Utilities plc, and Spring Group plc, an IT recruitment company and
President of Gov3, an ICT consulting company staffed by former members of the Office of the e-Envoy,
He is also Chairman of BECTA, the
schools, including the fingerprint equipment that is stealing the fingerprint ID’s of
hundreds of thousands of
He was awarded the
CONFLICT OF
INTEREST ?
Well lets see. A report
published by Sirius Corporation following FOI revelations show that BECTA have
been unable to account for £200 million of the £300 million given to purchase
ICT for schools, all on Andrew Pinder’s watch.
Andrew Pinder has
also decided that BECTA is not going to allow schools to decide what they
believe is best for individual schools, not what is best for the children, but
wants to turn schools into an Industry. An Industry led by software,
controlled by BECTA and strangely Pinder is the Senior Vice President for a
major software supplier to government.
We can hear
Pinder here
at a seminar at the Oxford Internet Institute in 2006 where he describes how he
wants to turn education into an Industry.
The seminar is
headed: Andrew Pinder, Chairman of the British Educational Communications and
Technology Agency (Becta), discusses his vision of the future of e-learning.
What are the key challenges for building a technological and institutional
infrastructure for education in the 21st century?
So Pinder is
simultaneously responsible for a Software Vendor (Entrust), a Consultant to government
through his Gov3 consulting firm, and the head of the Procurement agency for
schools software.
CONFLICT OF
INTEREST ?
David Blunkett
should feel right at home with Entrust, scandal, illegal fingerprinting of
children in the UK, European child ID Card schemes and fingerprinting
from birth planned in secret, ID cards for all, European control.
Say NO to ID
cards, Say NO to the
