Report - Guardian

142 The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005“Every time an appointment is made, claim to be away on holiday and unable to attend.Keep breaking appointments due to illness, bus broken down, etc. Push up theadministrative costs as much as possible each step of the way.”“Forget accompanying information. Take wife's passport by mistake. Have some kindof fit in the foyer. Have some kind of fit during the eyeball scanning. Turn up roaringdrunk. Smoke during the process. Vomit on the machines. Take your 'carer' along anddemand they be allowed to accompany you during the process. Provide all informationvia your 'carer' and later dispute the accuracy of conversation.”Overload the system“…organise ‘Renew your passports’ week or month. Time it so that everyone just beatsthe deadline where they'd be entered on the NIR. And we also swamp the PassportOffice, which regularly has month-long backlogs just with normal renewals.Think about what proportion of the population normally needs to interact with thePassport Office in a month. 0.3%? If we get that up to 6% (i.e. 200x more), they'll besunk for at least a year.”“Give lots of not quite correct information, and then send a series of letters ‘correcting’it item by item ("I had thought I lived at 2 Acacia Drive from 3 September 2005, but myaunt has reminded me that I moved in on the day she had her hip replacement, whichwas 4 September, not the 3rd", "I have now checked my birth certificate and discoveredmy middle name does have an 'e' in it after all"... etc).”Payment“…paying in amounts of less than £1 a time using multiple Girobank cheques, which,[at the time of the poll tax], cost the recipient at least 50p per cheque in bank charges tocollect, but which were free to the payee.- paying hundreds of pounds not merely in cash, but in small coins...”“How can we register or pay fines, etc. if we haven't received the relevant letters? Stillon letters, when they arrive, write "unsolicited junk mail, return to sender", on unopenedenvelopes and post them back.”“If it comes to it… pay with cheques from defunct accounts. Forget to sign them. Putthe decimal point in the wrong place. Use a completely different signature. Don't putstamps to the full value on the envelope so the receiving office has to pay to get it. Get acertificate of posting from the post office (they're free) for everything you send, butmake your handwriting on the envelope impossible to read so it can't be delivered.”Boycott“Write to you bank, building society, insurance company, the supermarket you useregularly, and tell them that you will take your business elsewhere if they support theintroduction of ID cards…”