Karen Challinor

UK

staring at clouds

nice to see Mr Thomson hasn't lost his sense of humour, we all understand that the rash promise by Mr Brown to "allow inspections of government departments" was made in the heat of the moment and if the ICO thought about it they would see this isn't necessary, and as for the power to prosecute government departments well thats just plain silly.

on the other hand a few more draconian measures aimed at the private sector may be just the ticket, pep up those sad looking coffers with some new fines and keep the ICO busy, much too busy to consider looking at anything HMG might be doing at the very least

here's the analogy, HMG is a schoolyard and the different departments in HMG are gangs of children, the gangs are highly insular and fights are continually breaking out which the teacher (Mr Brown) has to break up, but the teacher can't be everywhere so there's always something going on, the ICO is the new kid in school, bit weedy, NHS glasses held together with elastoplast and a bit smelly, no one wants to play with him, he has to go cap in hand for everything to everybody but he dreams of being a prefect, a dream which he's never going to have fulfilled because the other kids will jump on him if it even looks like he's going to be a prefect, meanwhile he beats up the kids outside the schoolyard in the faint hope that will earn him enough kudos to join a gang

I used to watch "Yes Minister", excellent programme, I never thought the scripts would be outdone by real life, guess I was wrong