Zappafication :)

The UK is becoming an increasingly frustrating country to live in. Why? Layers of beaurocracy, incompetence, high taxes and cost of living. Faux inflation and unemployment figures. Property price-linked ego inflation. Obsession with celebrity, public apathy and general all-round stupidity abound. So naturally, when the latest government fiasco hit the news (yep, it's been a bad week for our 'government'), I was particularly interested to find out more. After all, the cock-up is in areas where I have a certain amount of knowledge, namely computing, technology and security. So you can imagine my combined disappointment and delight to find out that this mess isn't a result of complex technology or poor communication up the management chain, crossing the invisible knowledge divide between technical geekdom and "management" (members of the latter community seeming to be incredibly knowledgeable about it but little else).

So how the hell did we get to the point where 25 million people's personal ID data got lost in the post? Can any kid lucky enough to receive the golden disks, with a CD-ROM equipped PC, pour over the data and start flogging it on ebay? If not, why are we all being told to check our bank accounts carefully? I mean, surely the data is held securely on these disks, right?

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