More lost data

Son now its the NHS fessing up to losing data. And the response:

The Department of Health says patients have been told and there is no evidence data has fallen into the wrong hands.

They just don't get it, do they?

If I lose my credit cards I declare it straight away so they can be cancelled. It doesn't matter if I don't think they've fallen in to the wrong hands, I have to assume they might do. Imagine what would happen if, after 12 months, they get used by criminals. What will the Credit Companies say - tough shit mate, you didn't tell us so we couldn't cancel them.

The fact that it has needed a security review to find out that the data is missing is even more worryin, it shows that there is a sloppy culture developing where nobody understands the importance of what they are dealing with or is willing to take responsibility.

I have asked this before and I ask again: How much data is being sent around the world and why?

Arguments for small Government

The Remittance Man has an interesting piece, AND TALKING OF INCOMPETENCE, in which he argues that Government is so big there just isn't enough talent to fill all the key roles such as Chancellor, Home Secretary and heads of Civil Service etc. Therefore we should reduce the size of Government. This is a well made case in a good cause, but it doesn't go far enough as it only considers one half of the equation.

I cannot argue with the need for talented people in those key jobs and that the numbers should be reduced to an absolute minimum but my argument is that this is because while they are consuming wealth they are not creating it. Surely we want our most talented people in industry creating wealth for the country?

This wealth creation argument is also the drive behind Lawson's dictum that taxes should be simple and universal. We don't want our best talent trying to minimise a Company's ever more difficult tax liability; we want them generating higher profits for their companies. On a personal level I resent having to pay an accountant to fill in my annual tax return even tough he generally save me money. He should be doing something more productive.

Consider the case of tax credits, probably the most fiendishly difficult tax relief system ever devised. In order to make it work we have some of our best computer programmers writing programmes and scripts so that people in call centres can deal with the ever growing problems. Surely raising the tax threshold would be the simplest way to give poor people a tax break? And then these creative programmers could be developing products that can be used to create wealth?

A medal to the person who lost "those discs"

This whole episode nails the lie that the data underpinning ID cards will be safe and that we have nothing to worry about.

Yes I know 25m people are going to be inconvenienced and some may even lose money, which I am sure the banks and Govt will repay. I'll even bet that some of that will be a scam by some people "defrauding" themselves in the hope of making more money. But thats a small price to pay for the greater good.

We are told that it was a lack of procedures that caused the problem, so what, it happened. No doubt the ID card proponents will tell us that the procedures will be tighter and that they have learnt from this episode. This just shows how ignorant they are about procedures, which are written by humans to be carried out be humans. Furthermore, they are designed to capture the 99% of events that people envisage, they do not, and cannot, cover every eventually or for people's in built laziness and stupidity.

So give that person a medal and perhaps NO2ID could make this some sort of annual award along the lines of the Darwin Awards?