Thursday 22 November 2007

Governments are "utter, unbelievable, jaw-dropping, unpardonable idiots"

A very large number of Britons have just woken up to the fact that government cannot be trusted with their data: Her Majesty's Government has just misplaced the personal details of some twenty-five million people. Well done HM Government, eh?

British commentators are already beginning to say that watching Gordon Brown as PM is like watching Frank Spencer make a garden shed, and this is only exacerbating the contempt in which he's held. Frankly, in my view, anything that demonstrates to millions of people that governments are "utter, unbelievable, jaw-dropping, unpardonable idiots" is a very good thing in my book.

UPDATE: "There is lack of honesty about this," says Liberty Scott. "It didn't happen yesterday, or last week. It happened months ago - the efforts to find the [misplaced information] have been fruitless, so now the banks have been advised, and the public too. It is not a Labour or Tory issue, it is an issue about government, and the simple fact that there are never the adequate incentives or accountability for when the government fails to protect its citizens. This is [another] very good reason why governments should do less, nor more."

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