Gordon Brown says Peter Hain guilty of “an incompetence”

The Prime Minister said that Mr Hain had made a mistake which he had readily admitted to.

There are several issues here which give rise to more than a little concern:

1. Mr. Hain, if admittedly incompetent, how can we trust him to competently run a Government department?

2. Why do we bother having these rules and these expensive enquiries when there appears to be no consequences when the rules are broken?

3. Spending over £100,000 on the deputy leadership campaign and coming in fifth does appear to be more than just a little incompetent.

The Prime Minister has said that he has full confidence in this “incompetent minister”, after all his department, the department of work and pension has not lost any data. Indeed their data records have been found …twice…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7197048.stm

Documents from the department of Work and Pensions (Yes, Peter Hain’s Department) containing sensitive personal data, including details of benefit claims, passport photocopies, and mortgage payments were found dumped on a roundabout in Devon. This is the second time in the last three months that this has occurred.

No one at Downing Street has admitted, what everyone is thinking. As well as having no more money to spend on new jails, the government has also run out of financing for storage space. Therefore a new policy of dumping unwanted data and storage materials has been initiated by the former chancellor.

NHS Patient Medical records lost in Stockport, England UK

Again we are told of the events that happened in the past rather than immediate notification of more civil and public servant incompetence.

The Stockport Primary Care Trust (PCT) lost a memory stick containing patient medical details, which includes patient names, dates of birth, NHS Numbers, and GP details.

The data has been missing since December.

According to those responsible for the loss, the information cannot be used by identity fraudsters. Yea Right! We trust these morons to be the experts on what is possible and what is not. And you will like this, also according to those responsible for losing the data in question, “The loss was an accident rather than any systemic failing in management”. Yea Right Again!

Oh! And just in case you may be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe just a one off incident. No, sorry. The Stockport PCT also had to admit that they lost diaries containing patient’s names and addresses, apparently stolen from staff cars, in two separate incidents last June.

Government Incompetence, public servant incompetence, should we trust these people with anything? There is a danger that this site is becoming a Public Data Lost and Found blog. Unfortunately, we do not find too many stories about data being found. Gordon Brown, who is also head of the British Civil Service, must love this.

Woman, 84, discharged in nightie

As you will no by now, we are completely unsympathetic to the excuses made by public servants when they do something dumb, thoughtless and uncaring. So when some unthinking moron discharges and elderly lady from hospital at 3am then we must speak out in the name of common sense and decency.

In fact, we think that the only way to remedy these situations is for the person making these descisions to take responsibility and suffer the consequences.

So whoever made this diabolical descision at Herfeford hospital should suffer the consequences. They are definitely not able to make descisions that affect people's lives.

Do you want this person to be making descisions affecting the care and health of your loved ones? Of course you don't.

The person or persons are not fit for the post and should be removed immediately before anyone dies.

Stomach bug sweeping the country (UK)

Wash your hands!

I was lucky enough to be on the Ocean Villager 2 cruise ship this summer, and I was very impressed by their safeguards to prevent an outbreak of the NoroVirus.

At each entrance to any dining hall there was a member of staff who stood in your way with a hand wash gel for you to wash your hands before entering the dining hall.

The gel itself was a much better solution than I have seen in any of our hospitals. I think hospital managers could look at what the Ocean Villager did and use this to ensure that all hospital STAFF and VISITORS wahsed their hands BEFORE entering the hospital.

This should be supplemented by washing the hands of all patients and staff before each meal. Simply carry the gel around with the meal tray.

Making Money Online

I have always wanted to find a nice easy way to make money.

Now, even if I put $10,000 in the bank or even a pretty good mutual fund, I would not really have too much to show after 10 or 15 years. At least that is what I thought until I discovered the investment system being used by stocksmonthly.com

Their investment method is fairly simple and obvious, and they do all the work for you.

If they can perform as well over the next 15 years as they did over the last 15 years then I am not going to worry too much about my blog traffic.

Anger as NHS patient records lost

It has only been a few days since our last post about how incompetent our civil service really is.

However, the recent revelations regarding the loss of NHS data in England and Wales shows systemic failure is rife.

Senior civil servants and senior government ministers really do need to lose their jobs when the level of incompetence reaches such levels.

Remember the Prime Minister is in charge of the Civil Service. Either he needs to act, or he needs to go.

The depatment of administrative affairs, Jim Hacker, and Sir Humphrey whoever these real life mandarins are have truly lost the confidence of the public and Yes Prime Minister's Jim Hacker would appear to be more up for the job than the current incumbent.

W.H. Smith Generous to a fault - Offer Sucks!

Whilst shopping for christmas presents this year, I received a £5 voucher to spend at their sale between 26-Dec-2007 and 6-jan-2008.



I thought, that will be nice, I maybe use it to get a discount on some computer games or DVDs.

That is, until I read the small print on the back of the voucher.

"Offer excludes all CDs DVDs and Games, ie. XBOX 360, PSP, PS2, PS3, NDS, PC, GameCube, Xbox, GBA and Wii, and stamps , tobacco, gift vouchers, phone cards, e-gift cards, book tokens, Day Out Vouchers, Carity Products, iTunes, eTop-UP & National Lottery products. Cannot be used with any other promotional voucher or with customer orders. Only one voucher per transaction."

For those of you who live in the UK and know W.H. Smith, you will also know that after you exclude the above named products that there is not much left.

I think I will just use the voucher to wipe my @rse, and return it to the person who thought up the idea in the first place.

How the British Consumer is being Screwed

(If you are unable to see full image then click on the image.)


Today with the advent of the world wide enconomy and the internet, global companies manufacture and sell their wares all over the world. This christmas I had to shop for friends and relatives in both the United States and the UK. It is frighteneing how much more the British consumer has to pay in comparison to their American Cousins.

I have been careful to compare like for like. Normally UK prices include VAT but US prices exclude sales tax. For the sake of comparison I have deducted the horrendously high 17.5% VAT from the UK prices and compared them with the US (Excl Sales tax) Prices.

The worst offenders are large companies. Microsoft are charging, in some cases, 36% more for their software here in the UK than in the US. Of course, our governement cares nothing about the British comsumer, nor inflation apparently.

The UK £ / US $ exchange rate on 20-Dec-2007 was £1 = $2.032.

If you think that the current situation is fair then do nothing. Remember that we are paid on average aboput 10% less than our American cousins.

However, if you think this is unfair and unacceptable then write, call or email, television channels, newspapers, MP's and local councillors. Let's fight for fairness and let us stop subsidising the rest of the world.

Sources:

Amazon USA
Amazon UK
Cheap iPods
Microsoft
Jaguar

Is the British Civil Service Totally Incompetent?

John Reid, the former home secretary, has already told us that the Home Office is not fit for purpose.

Well the recent fiasco with HM Customs and Revenue losing vital data on nearly half the population of the country started us thinking.

Then we are told just a couple of weeks later that some moron in the Driver and Vehicle Driving Agency in Northern Ireland has lost data on 7,685 vehicles and 6,000 vehicle keepers.

Oh No! It’s not finished yet. Just as we are thinking that it cannot get any worse, we are told another disc containing details of 3 million learner drivers has gone missing. Even worse the data was stored in a foreign country. And to show what complete incompetents this government, their ministers and the civil service really are the latest episode we are told happened six months ago.

Now for sheer cheek and hypocrisy, the Government has fined Norwich Union £1.6M for losing the data of 74 people.

That works out at approximately £21,621 per person.So using the Government figures of 25Million from HM Revenue, and 3,013,685 from the DVLA, then the Data Protection registrar should be fining this Government £605,683,883,385.

No minister has lost his or her job, and apart from the HM Revenue guy who resigned, no civil servant has been fired. Everyone we speak to is running for cover, no one is taking responsibility, and it is fair to say that competence is not something we can have much expectation of from our public servants.

We, the public, pay the wages of these people. We pay good money and should reasonably expect workers who are honest and competent. Should we find that these two attributes are missing, then I’m afraid that there really is no place in public service for those lacking these attributes.

Does any member of the public really believe that no one has received a peerage or a Knighthood for donations to any of the major political parties?

No authority without responsibility should be the rule.

Every project, every policy would have a responsible person and if there is a screw-up then we will immediately know who to look to for the answers.

Lunatics running the asylum are bad enough but we really can’t have them running the country as well.

Free Online Wish List

Christmas gift shopping has been so much easier this year. I got the kids, my nephews and nieces all to create a christmas wish list at http://www.youcouldgetme.com/. When it came time to do my christmas shopping I visited each gift list and bought something that they really wanted this time.

I even tested it out for myself. My birthday is only two weeks before christmas, and I am at that sort of age when nobody knows what to buy me. So this year, about three weeks before my birthday I went on a virtual shopping spree.

I added gifts that I really wanted. Some expensive. Some very modestly priced - makes it easier for my kids to buy me something too :)

Give it a try...