Data Losses

[Catfish]

Yawn, not again.

I reckon the government have decided they think ID cards are a shit idea after all and they can't be arsed, and rather than face an embarrassing back-pedal in front of EVERYONE, they've decided to 'lose' some stuff to whip up a national media frenzy of personal-detail-paranoia so they couldn't introduce them if they wanted to, which they don't any more.

[ralph2]

I reckon this sort of thing has always happened no matter who is in power. The press have it in for Brown, they have turned, the Tories will be in at the next election.

New Conservatives anyone?

[sideshow]

it'll be a hung parliament or summat, the press are getting a bit daft on this, expect the phone book to be revealed as a terrorist victim catalogue next week.

[ab]

I normally love a good conspiracy theory but I think that if the government wanted to shelve ID cards they could have done so without making themselves look like a bunch of clownshoes. Broon had the opportunity to ditch all of the unpopular policies of the past (which of course he had nothing to do with and certainly never had the opportunity in Cabinet to veto) but decided not to.

An alternative conspiracy theory is that the Civil Service are getting tired of New Labour and are therefore less cagey about cock-ups so as to embarrass the government out of office (arguably similar things happened in the mid 90s eg in relation to the prison service leading to the famous Paxman interview of Michael Howard where he asked the same question over and over again).

More plausibly, it is just the government getting hoist by its own petard having promised and to an extent delivered transparency via the Freedom of Information Act. As this is a clunky bit of legislation it isn't very good at letting people access important and interesting things (eg the terms of PFI/PPP deals- although the Information Commissioner has recently rules that these aren't necessarily covered by commercial confidentiality in all cases) so people have had to be creative in asking for non-obvious things. Must be an absolute ballsache for Civil Servants to deal with FOIA requests so releasing embarrassing info might just be their revenge.

The more data the government keeps about you and shares between departments the greater the risk. The more it uses external contractors to manage the data, the more the risk. As the volume of data collated, the degree of sharing of data or intention to share data and the use of private contractors has rocketed in the past decade, the severity of the cock-ups must be substantially greater than before.

The Press gave Brown an easy ride to start off with but they were probably more pissed off than anyone by the non-election.

PM Clegg?

[sideshow]

He'll be the darling of the press for a bit, but the dyed in the wool element of the populace mean the best they can ever hope for is to fuck it up for the two main parties.

[CaptainSambuca]

I'D RATHER VOTE FOR COMPO

HAHAHA

[Catfish]

I take your point, AB, but like that car company (can't remember which one it was) that knowingly sold cars with minor faults in, so that when the customers brought them to have them fixed they could dazzle them with an instant and effective repair, customer service dripping with big customer love and 'sincere' apologies, maybe it's a good chance to 'show that they're listening' to what the public want...

I love conspiracy theories more than you, ner ner ner ner ner.

[ab]

Now, if Mandelson was still involved I'd give that some credence as being the sort of stunt that he might think a good idea. However, what has happened is more like the car company sending someone round with a baseball bat the night after you bought the car to smash its windows then telling you that they did it when you ring them up to get the windows replaced. No amount of customer service will get you past "they smashed my car up on purpose".