{"id":319,"date":"2010-03-18T11:33:27","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T11:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randomjottings.co.uk\/wpress\/?p=319"},"modified":"2014-02-12T10:14:48","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T10:14:48","slug":"are-pensioners-the-new-guinea-pigs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/?p=319","title":{"rendered":"Are Pensioners the New Guinea Pigs?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It seems moves are afoot to try and con pensioners into shelling out for the controversial National Identity Card.<\/p>\n<p>Meg Hillier, the Home Office minister in charge of scheme, said \u201ca number of local authorities\u201d had been in touch to ask whether they had to continue to issue bus passes, if the card proves age <a title=\"Pensioners could be forced to show ID for bus travel\" href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/newstopics\/politics\/lawandorder\/7465926\/Pensioners-could-be-forced-to-show-ID-for-bus-travel.html\" target=\"_blank\">why do we need to have bus passes for 60-plus year-olds<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>My question is, if the local authorities only see a need to prove age, why not accept other forms of ID?\u00a0Passports\u00a0and driving licenses have been around far longer and have a better take-up than the despised identity card.<\/p>\n<p>Should we really start hammering cash strapped pensioners with a \u00a390 charge for their mobility as a way for the government to push its pet white elephant?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems moves are afoot to try and con pensioners into shelling out for the controversial National Identity Card. Meg Hillier, the Home Office minister in charge of scheme, said \u201ca number of local authorities\u201d had been in touch to ask whether they had to continue to issue bus passes, if the card proves age [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomjottings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}