[Andrew...] also claimed that the human resources consultants employed to discover the levels of job satisfaction at the British domestic intelligence service had found that there was “only one organisation they had investigated that had higher morale: the publisher Mills & Boon”.

Which does rather beg the question of which other organisations they had investigated.¹

1. I’m sure MI5 is a much happier place to work right now than, say, BP’s PR agency.

Now ministers are being told they must travel to their constituencies by second class public transport, but for security reasons their red boxes must travel to the constituency separately in a private car.

This seems like the sort of thing that happens when someone takes a new policy just a bit too literally. Surely it’s eminently fixable: just make other arrangements for ministers to have access to the material in their red boxes.

Given that much of the material the minister is being asked to review will be reports, correspondence, memos and the like that were prepared on a computer,¹ how hard could it really be?²

[Via New Statesman]

1. Or that could have been prepared in the appropriate format if it was known in advance that this was necessary.
2. That said, let’s hope that the chosen solution isn’t to have all this correspondence prepared in various nice, accessible formats only to be copied to a flash drive that is handed to the minister on their way out of the building on a Friday night.

“Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

Guess what happened next:

I never expected to be charged, but a month later I was: not under the offence of making a bomb threat, for which I was originally arrested, but under the communications act for the offence of sending a menacing message. [...] Even after all the preceding absurdity and near-breakdown-inducing stress, I was confident common sense would prevail in my day in court.

Unfortunately, yesterday I was found guilty and ordered to pay £1,000 in fines and legal costs, which I have to find along with my own legal costs of another £1,000. I am considering an appeal, though I have no means, having left my job due to the circumstances.

I wonder if our new Justice Secretary has any thoughts about whether taking Chambers to court really served the interests of justice.

The voting system and the electorate have botched this election. Reality, as it sometimes helpfully does, offers a metaphor for what we’ve done. In Chingford, an Independent candidate decided to do something frightfully amusing and changed his name to ‘None of the Above’. But because of the way names were presented, he appeared as ‘Above, None of the’ – at the top of the ballot.

I have some sympathy for Timms. I suspect that he probably does know what an ‘IP address’ is, given that the concept of an ‘IP Address’ is central to one of the key issues around the problem of identifying ‘internet pirates.’ The logging of an IP address by an ISP can – at best – allow online activities to be associated with a particular ISP customer’s account but not a particular person. In the case of a commercial provider of internet connectivity, like a cafe or pub or hotel that offers free wireless internet access, they may not even be able to manage that much.¹

Given that Timms and his civil servants have probably been using the term ‘IP’ as shorthand for ‘Intellectual Property’ for months now as they’ve exchanged goodness knows how many emails and memos and drafts of bits of the Digital Economy Bill, I can easily imagine whoever drafted the letter either having a brain-fart, misinterpreting the abbeviation when they typed up the letter, or simply falling foul of Microsoft Word’s ever-helpful AutoCorrect feature.

It’s a poor show that nobody spotted the slip before sending the response, but I’m deeply sceptical of the notion that it represents evidence that Stephen Timms believes that my computer’s connection to the internet has been allocated an ‘Intellectual Property address’ by my ISP.

[Via Why, That's Delightful!]

1. We can be pretty sure this will have come up during Timms’ discussions with ISPs and the record companies over the Digital Economy Bill. The ISPs will have been pressing the point that an IP address doesn’t identify any particular culprit, whereas the record companies will have been explaining that this is exactly why they need the ISPs to just downgrade/disconnect their customer’s internet connection, rather than expect the record company to identify the individual engaged in ‘piracy’ and take them to court.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord has asked me a Question about corned beef cans. I have been answering questions about them all my life and I regard them as one of my real areas of expertise.

There is a real problem about corned beef cans. They have a trapezoidal shape and a key kind of ring. The DTI has done much work on this issue in giving further instructions and also special coatings for the cans which enable the corned beef to be extracted more easily. There has in fact been a remarkable drop in accidents with corned beef cans. They have fallen from 8,720 per year out of 26,000 accidents caused by all tins to 3,091 out of 19,000. I should point out that the really dramatic decrease came after 1997.

[...]

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that if, having taken off one end of the corned beef can with the twisty thing provided – assuming that you have not lost it – you then take a common, ordinary, household tin-opener and take off the other end, it is very easy to push the corned beef out of the tin without any danger to yourself?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Yes, my Lords, I was aware of that, and I am very glad that that essential piece of information is passed round for the benefit of this House.

Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes: My Lords, does the Minister agree, as the noble Baroness has demonstrated, that most home accidents are avoidable, arising out of carelessness, and that therefore paying attention is one of the best cures?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I totally agree. These statistics on accidents are extremely fascinating; they prove that the British public can use practically anything in this world to hurt themselves with. It is understandable that there are an estimated 55 accidents a year from putty, while toothpaste accounts for 73. However, it is rather bizarre that 823 accidents are estimated to be the result of letters and envelopes. It is difficult to understand how they can be the cause of such serious plight. I agree with the noble Baroness that it would be helpful if people paid careful attention.

Baroness Strange: My Lords, does the Minister agree that sardine tins and anchovy tins are also very difficult to open with their tin-openers?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I think I will just agree with the noble Baroness on that question.

I’m all in favour of turning the House of Lords into a directly elected body, but I have to admit that there’s a small part of me that’ll miss the Lords Spiritual and Temporal when they’re gone.

[Via Joel Hanes, posting a comment at The Edge of the American West]

The person concerned had written to ask about MoD policy on alien abductions and pointed out that if the experience was real, the MoD was failing to maintain the territorial integrity of UK airspace – a core defence mission. After explaining the MoD’s role with respect to UFOs, the somewhat sniffy response stated: “Abduction is a criminal offence and as such is a matter for the civil police.”

[Via The Browser]

“Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

Perhaps so. Perhaps not. Depends who he was talking to. I’d imagine that any family/friends/acquaintances were following him on Twitter probably knew his sense of humour and, quite possibly, his travel plans.¹

Was this a textbook case of an official overreaction?

A week after posting the message on the social networking site, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and questioned for almost seven hours by detectives who interpreted his post as a security threat. After he was released on bail, he was suspended from work pending an internal investigation, and has, he says, been banned from the Doncaster airport for life.

Hell, yes! Unless, that is, the prosecution reveal that their trawl through Chambers’ computer has revealed evidence that he actually is a spectacularly dim terrorist wannabe.

I’m not going to hold my breath.

As an added bonus, I’ll bet Chambers will be on various watch lists for the rest of his days, or until officials everywhere develop a sense of proportion in dealing with ‘terrorist threats.’²

[Via Groc's various musings]

1. He was due to fly out from the airport the following week.
2. Again, I won’t be holding my breath while I await the blessed day.

I suppose my fundamental question is this: who would be able to accomplish anything useful with this data presented in this format, without pulling down the data that underpins these charts and doing some number-crunching of their own?

That being said, I’ll be fascinated to see where they go with this. The simple act of pulling together all this data in one place is a useful service in itself; perhaps in the long run it’ll be the data they collate, not the graphs they draw, that make Where Does My Money Go?¹ worthwhile.

[Via Qwghlm]

1. I really wish they’d called it Where Does Our Money Go?