Who do you trust?

The event most worthy of note this week has been the debacle of the missing data of 25 million British people, floating around on 2 CDs somewhere between the Revenue and Benefits office in Tyne & Wear and the National Audit office in London. Good grief! It looks like what happened is that the Audit Office wanted some names and addresses, but it was easier to just copy the whole of the database rather than do a query. This is probably because all this IT stuff gets outsourced (costing us taxpayers billions by the way) and no-one internal actually knows how the database works, so they would have had to get someone else to do it.

No-one knows where the data is, and police have been searching for it, and it could turn up behind a desk somewhere I guess, but my theory is that someone has taken it home thinking one day they can make a lot of money this, but then got scared, and/or possibly waiting for the fuss to die down before doing anything with the disks. There's always the chance that it will mysteriously re-appear when they think nobody's looking. I wonder if they've realised that they could bring down the whole UK banking system – Northern Rock? peanuts!

One consequence of this state of affairs has been some backtracking in plans to introduce ID cards, requiring a national database – the argument being that we can't be sure the data would be safe. Well der! Personally, I have never been naïve enough to believe that our personal data stays in one place. I know that companies buy and sell it so they can use it for marketing purposes or whatever. The situation is not helped by the fact that UK government has a history of continuing to pay companies to create these ridiculously unreliable IT systems (see health service for details) instead of getting someone who knows what they're on about to do it. Will they ever learn?

A Night of the Unexpected

We had an interesting night in Huddersfield on Friday, as we went to see what this Festival of Light was all about. This entailed some French performers called Plasticien Volant putting on a show called The Pearl, starting at St Peter's gardens and parading through the streets with a growing array of large flying sea creatures including jellyfish, seahorses, octopus, a whale and some kind of snake, chasing a pearl through the streets to St. George's square, where said pearl ended up in its shell. There were loads of people lining the streets, some intrigued, some puzzled, and some downright scared by the strange Europeaness...Well, it is a bit weird for Huddersfield but it probably happens all the time in places like France and Canada. At the end of the performance, there were fireworks being let off from behind the station, which was nice.

We made a quick exit to beat the crowds out of the town centre, as we had tickets for a Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival event at Bates Mill called 1 Night of the Unexpected. When we got there, there was some what I call bing bang bong music going on, so I distracted myself with a cheap beer and took the piss. my neek partner told me to stop wingeing and accused me of not getting it. Err! I do understand that two tunes were going on at once; I just hate that shit. Thankfully, things got better, with a very interesting violin performance, a fantastic laser show and someone getting toy cars to play records – a cross between spinning plates and scalextrics. There was also a funny DJ who played old random scratched 7” singles, and a woman doing industrial drumming – ah! That took me back to the '80's!

We also experienced a very interesting installation with a Luddite theme (now I got this straight away and hardly anyone else did – including a couple I knew who had just arrived and looked puzzled, and loads of eggheads who just stood there watching people twiddling knobs). We stayed almost 3 hours altogether, then some more awful bing bang bong music started up, this time of the jazz variety so even worse than the brass type, and we made our escape.

All in all, we agreed we had had a very entertaining night; it was certainly different. The HCMF audience made me crack up though – mainly university bods and students, on the guest list of course, chattering on about the last thing they went to rather than actually listening to and watching what was going on in front of them. I wondered how many of these experimental musicians had research grants at us tax-payers expense to pay for their expensive Apple laptops and lasers. Hmm! (sound of me stroking chin and looking pensive!)

nice work if you can get it

A few items in the local paper have been getting us riled this weekend. The first is to do with bidding for some lottery money to do up the park. I would like to know why on earth the council needs £90,000 for this! All the park needs is a tidy up and a few better items in the kids' playground (and getting rid of the stupid skateboard park would help to discourage the wannabe chavs).

The second item involves the local council wanting to stop people complaining about their services. Well, if they actually offered any visibly decent services in return for the extortionate amounts we pay in council tax, people wouldn't complain would they? I have been trying to contact them this week to report a non-working street light. The number I have from the council's own services directory is out of date, and a message which is barely audible gives you an alternative number to ring. I had to listen to the damn thing three times until I could make out the new number! No wonder people get pissed off.

Which brings me to the last item to hack us off namely plans by aforesaid council to spend £100,000 to improve their image, including £30k on a Reputation Manager. They wouldn't need one if they were any good! Still, nice work if you can get it I suppose!

Night of the Tranny Vampires

Last night was our annual fireworks display. We went out and met up with a friend and got a pint before finding a spot on the Marina. We had a laugh with the cheap sparklers we had bought earlier – 3 out of 6 were little better than burning sticks! I said next time we were getting Chinese ones, none of that British rubbish! The firework display was a bit earlier than normal but it was really spectacular! It could have been the best ever! Some of them were like sparkly snow and I wished I'd remembered my camera as I could have had this year's Christmas card piccie now.

Town was predictably heaving and our friend didn't want to go in any crowded pubs afterwards so we went to the White Swan and sat in the garden (even though she had slagged it off earlier for being awful but I don't really know why). I quizzed her about not inviting us to the special night at her local, the Hare and Hounds to celebrate a new tenure. She said it was weird as they were dressed up and the landlord was wearing fishnets and a Dracula cape. Transvestite Vampires in Old Town – excellent! Spooky rural goings-on suspicions confirmed yet again! We predictably started making up Hammer-type film plot lines.

Our friend went home early on the pretext of having to see to a neighbour's cats and so we went to our local. Another friend was on her way to see her daughter and niece at another pub but asked if we'd still be there in an hour. I said I wasn't sure, but we were – unfortunately. On her return, she was full of tales of woe, including her best mate having lung cancer, her daughter self-harming, her sister having an eating disorder and her ex turning out to be a trannie. I must say, the last of these seemed trivial and who cares as long as no-one gets hurt. We said he should move to Old Town!

however, I guess your best mate dying is rather heavy, but I could do without knowing at the end of an otherwise amusing and entertaining night – selfish I know but I really wished we had gone home earlier as originally planned. On the other hand, it is a traditional drinking day and the highlight of the local calendar so it is inevitable that you drink more than you should and stay out later. We seem to be doing this less often now so I guess the odd binge is okay (despite what our nanny state government say).