Where am I?

There is an attempt to modernise the image of the London Tourist Board, captured in a new advertising campaign. In a departure from the traditional shots of Beefeaters, Changing of the Guard and punks with mohican hairstyles, it uses the distinct U-bend shape of the river Thames as a visual leitmotif in a variety of settings, and carries just two words: visit London.

Yesterday I saw one of these ads on a train on the London Underground. I am not sure exactly how attention-deficient the average visitor to London is, but if people do find that particular ad useful or well-placed, I'd wonder how on earth they managed to tie their own laces, never mind negotiate the interchanges on the Central Line.

Shooting fish in a barrel

Carol Thatcher revealed yesterday that her mother, the former British Prime Minister, has been suffering from dementia for 7 years.

Too easy, I'm afraid; you can fill in the punchline yourselves.

Spot the difference, part two

One is a country persecuted for the ethnicity of its majority population, which must be recognised as an independent state in record time by the Russian Duma. The other is an illegitimate polity run by criminals and terrorists. Or is it the other way around?

All that glitters is news gold

The news that pop star-turned-sex-criminal Gary Glitter is heading back to the UK has been met with undisclosed glee by the reptiles of fleet street. Even the normally sober 'Today' programme on Radio 4 was reduced to tracking his progress though the airports of Asia and into the UK, as though they were expecting him to violate a child halfway through the flight.

I was left to reflect on the irony of the situation when my son was left confused by this news story that was apparently just about someone travelling on an aeroplane. Without some heavy censorship of the news by me, the feverish speculation ahead of Mr Glitter's arrival was much more of a threat to my son's mental well being than anything 'The Leader of the Gang' was likely to do.

Too much information

The government has outsourced its data-losing responsibilities to a company called PA consulting, who have 'mislaid' a memory-stick containing the personal details of 84,000 people. This is clearly a much more efficient way of lose information, rather than the recent spate of laptops left on trains in the Surrey area; memory-sticks are small enough to fit into a pocket, or down the back of the coffee machine, which means it's extremely unlikely ever to turn up again. Presumably this will be the next line of defence the Home Office will try, to reassure people the data won't fall into the wrong hands, once it has stopped shouting "IT WAS ALL THE CONTRACTOR'S FAULT" at any journalist who'll listen.

Anger seemed to dissipate once it turned out the data lost was the private addresses of the entire UK's prison population. As audiences warranting public sympathy go, banged-up criminals would rank pretty low, somewhere just ahead of Gary Glitter. But in an attempt to keep the story alive the Conservative Party has been keen to imply that this exposed the government to being sued by those affected, which seemed a pretty desperate take on the facts. After all, last year the government lost even more sensitive personal data belonging to me, along with about 25 million other people, when two CD-ROMs went missing in transit between London and Newcastle. At no point did anyone imply, let alone advise me, that I might be entitled to sue the government for negligence and claim compensation.

To me the most surprising thing is not that data gets lost - given the numbers of people who come into contact with sensitive personal data held by the Government, it is inevitable. Rather it is the dizzying quantity of bytes that seems to go astray on every occasion. Why on earth did the worker in question need the personal data on every prisoner in the UK? What was he doing - compiling an HMP Christmas Card list? It's like the stationery manager of the Bank of England taking the entire national gold reserves to the corner shop, in case he doesn't have enough cash for a packet of paperclips.