Or do what I did and buy a cheap (£20 / $30), generic*, DVD player that doesn't pay any attention to the 'force watch' nonsense. Plus I made it region free after spending almost a minute searching the internet and pressing some buttons on the remote conrtol.

* - it's Hyundai branded but I've seen the firmware on many differnt machines.

oh come on, this is slashdot - nobody reads TFAs...

Then why not just make some (most?) of the carridges like they are on the Eurostar (see http://www.eurostar.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurostar) and allow people to just drive straight onto the train? If it's only a 30 minute trip then people can stay in their cars. Just need to stick a couple of toilets in each carridge.

If someone is coming into the UK illegally (in the back of a truck for example) then they won't be coming through the 'official-wait-in-line-to-processed' queue. So how exactly will this new uber-database be able to know they've come into the country?

And as is typical with anything this government wants to introduce they've thrown the 'it'll stop illegal immigrant / cure terrorism / repeal child porn' card. However they never, ever tell you how *exactly* it's going to achieve those goals. And then they'll change these goals when it's been introduced, pretending never to have said that it'll actually have anything to do with the previous goals.

The only reason I can see for the current government to be introducing all these half-baked schemes is that they - like everyone else - can see that they're not getting back in at the next election and they're on a mission to screw things up for the next lot.

However, I seem to remember - and do hope to be corrected - that there is a law that the incoming government can't be held to any contracts agreed by the previous one. Knowing this lot though, it's probably been quietly repealed.