Add a comment September 2nd, 2008 by ThunderDragon
Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Harwich and Clacton, was thrown off the armed forces parliamentary scheme for speaking up for our soldiers in Afghanistan, who he says are poorly equipped:
Having learnt from our troops on the ground some of the serious problems with helicopter shortages, and then raised the issue responsibly, I found myself slung off the scheme…
The defence budget is being spent in the interests of some contractors, not our armed forces.
Damning indictments. Especially since the MoD could have replaced the Lynx with US Black Hawk helicopters, but had already committed to a new Lynx generation apparently costing twice as much.
Of course, how truthful this may be I do not know. But it does appear that, in the very least, our defence budget is not being spent properly. Whether this is the fault of the MoD or the defence contractors, however… But it must be fixed.
Image: Douglas Carswell
Add a comment January 19th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
It seems like the the government is intent on losing personal data on every person in Britain. They first lost the data of 25m people who claim child benefits [plus another six discs of personal information], then 3 million learner drivers details, then more information on a few more hundreds of thousands of people from nine NHS Trusts. And yet they are still losing more, with 600,000 people’s data being on an MoD laptop which was stolen, as well as “hundreds of documents containing sensitive personal data have been found dumped on a roundabout in Devon.”
By my calculations, that makes not far off 30 million people’s data having been lost by the government. Roughly half the population of the United Kingdom.
Doesn’t that make you feel secure about handing your data over the government?*
It is absolutely disgraceful that their security protocols are so poor, when they demand the information from us in the first place. I think that now, if it wasn’t already, the idea of any national ID card scheme, whether compulsory or not, is dead in the water. No-one with half a brain would trust the State with their personal details any more than absolutely essential. Unfortunately, what they do demand is more than enough.
* Yes, this is a rhetorical question
Sources: BBC, The Telegraph, The Times
