THE WINTER PALACE, On The Skids, Wednesday (NTN) — The identity card trial in Manchester has announced “stunning success,” with almost 1300 of the three million people in Greater Manchester having applied. Also, tractor production is up 500 per cent.

The number works out to 43 applicants per day for the new identity card, guaranteed to be a completely functional replacement for the standard British passport except the bit where any other country accepts it as one and an ironclad proof of age except if you want to have a barman actually know what the hell it is and not think it’s something you printed at home. Advertising the new card cost only £500,000, just £385 for each applicant. The number of applicants closely correlated with the number of Home Office staff working in the Greater Manchester area.

The process is modeled on the online application system for a standard passport, in which you fill in the information on a web page, the office prints out the information on a filled-in form, then post it to you, then you sign it and send it back. “Obviously that’s far too straightforward, I mean, prone to fraud,” said junior Home Office minister Meg Hillier. “We need a few more steps in there. And the concomitant staff.”

Mrs Hillier said that 439,000 Mancunians had applied for standard passports in the same time period, though she could not offer a breakdown of numbers per area of Manchester, as that would require being able to keep track of the addresses of passport applicants. “Deadly secret,” she said, tapping her nose. “Data protection. If I told you I’d have to bore you to death.”

KEEP CALM, And Carry On Panicking, Friday (NTN) — The Home Office has raised the terrorist threat level to “really strong tea.” An attack is not expected, but the government just “felt like it.”

The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (Jtac), a unit within MI5, had advised raising the threat level based on a broad range of factors, including losing the Section 44 case, the news cycle, how stroppy the human rights advocates were getting these days and whether Cameron had put his foot in it lately.

“It’s Monday,” mumbled Home Secretary Alan Johnson. “it’s a new year. There’s a pile of shit in front of you. Your head is pounding. There’s no imminent threats, but you just know that incompetent fuckwit in Detroit will make matters worse. Tea will help. Really it will. Boyfriend dumped you? Tea. You’ve got cancer? Tea. Terrorists blowing up London Underground? Tea, damn it.”

He urged public vigilance to continue. “Look out for the usual signs of trouble. People photographing landmarks or policemen. Particularly if the photographer’s brown, that’s a sure sign. People Twittering stupid stuff. People Twittering. People. Oh God, my head. Never get involved in a land war in Asda.”

Mr Johnson squeezed the bridge of his nose for a moment. “Just be glad we didn’t raise the level to ‘gin.'”

THE MEMORY HOLE, Wythenshawe, Tuesday (NTN) — Half of all journeys in and out of the UK are now being centrally recorded by the £1.2 billion e-Borders scheme, with a major data breach scheduled for later this year.

e-Borders aims to monitor every person going in or out of the United Kingdom by March 2014. The system is currently gathering data on between 45 and 50 per cent of people crossing the border, with the data being stored for Home Office analysis, action and accidental disclosure. The data is presently transmitted to the Manchester office over the Internet on a web site that only works in Internet Explorer 6. A backup channel sends the data to Manchester on unencrypted USB sticks via second-class post, a secondary backup channel uses outsourced call centre workers in India reading the data over the telephone and a tertiary backup channel involves the data being shouted in the streets of Manchester by random tramps.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas is pleased with the success of the scheme and anticipates a suitable security failure to occur on schedule by the end of this year. “We’ve taken care to attach fingerprints, photographs and National Insurance numbers to each line of data, so this should be a really good one. It might be one of the classic ones like a USB stick that someone ‘forgot’ to erase, someone using the system to stalk their ex or a skip full of printouts that weren’t shredded properly, or we might come up with startling new innovations in data breaches involving an office kitchen gas explosion raining files down on the streets of Salford or perhaps an alien al-Qaeda spacecraft swooping down and vaporising our security systems with precision laser blasts and letting our precious, precious data dribble forth, free and untrammeled. I’m quite looking forward to finding out!”

The opening of e-Borders’ Manchester office was originally delayed by problems training “match analysts,” who issue alerts to border guards when the system detects possible terrorists, criminals or people travelling while brown, not to mention no-one else in Europe accepting that the much-vaunted ID card is in any way equivalent to a British passport.

Woolas has dismissed claims that the requirement for data on passengers from continental Europe before they travel was illegal and impossible. “We’re sure we can bodge through something that will hold legally for a few months,” he said. “The key point is to leave the Tories a parting gift they can’t quite do without but which guarantees serious embarrassment for them in the second half of the year. It’s the least we can do.”