Bloody Labour Muppets (Again)!

There I am, doing my best to chill out driving home last night when THIS comes up on the news!

I am absolutely staggered that such important data has been treated as though it were no more important than an ordinary parcel. What concerns me even more is the implication this has for a Government that claims to be able to manage a complete National Identity Register. I had little trust in the Government to start with, but whatever little there may have been has now been eroded completely. How inept can a system be that allows key, personal data to be copied onto a CD?

What angered me further still was the attitude of the Home Office spokesman on Radio 4 last night. She patronisingly claimed that the National Identity Database would be free from this sort of risk as it was much more technically complex (I paraphrase her exact words, but that was the clear implication). To me this rationale is fundamentally flawed. In all other aspects of life, until someone can manage a simple system successfully, they are not given control of a more complex one. Would an RAF Tornado pilot be allowed to fly millions of pounds-worth of fast jet if they had not first mastered the controls of a basic, propeller driven trainer? I think not.

Our current Government seems to be of the belief that if there is a problem, technology has the ability to solve it. They never look at the underlying management structures and systems (the NHS being a glaring case in point) but simply invest billions in computer technology. Furthermore, I do not believe that they have the background or expertise to understand the gravity of this assumption. How can a bunch of people with little “real world” experience claim to know best how to implement a massive computer database. A system may have all of the safeguards in the world, but that does not take into account the human factor. I shudder when I think of the ramifications should even more critical, personal data to be lost from an even more comprehensive database.

My advice? Write to your MP and get onboard with these guys.