The story of the first Christmas

And thus it came to pass that the Lord did send forth a falling star to lead the Magi, the Three Wise Men, to the birthplace of the Son of God and Saviour of Mankind. Alas the falling star was caught and placed in someone's pocket who was determined it should never fade away.

And so the Lord did sent forth a second lone star to guide the Wise Men, but alas this was seized by a group of loud and quarrelsome people who would one day create the state of Texas.

Finally the Lord, at no inconsiderable expense, had to send forth a third start, making it pretty damned clear that he would not spring for a fourth to go forth, this was it. And this star appeared in the dark sky as a flaming torch to lead the way to the son of god and so it came to pass that the Magi were lead to their preordained destination, which pleased them much for they had no travel insurance and were voyaging on a budget and feared they could get no refund it they did not make the trip. Budget was all they could afford, having spent all their money on gold, frankincense and myrrh, which due to currency devaluation now cost even more than they had planned for. Alas, a few days after venerating the infant Jesus the Wise Men all died horribly of radiation poisoning brought on from such close proximity to the lethal output of a small star. Thus the Lord did decide that when the Second Coming was due he would invest in GPS and a decent Sat-Nav and perhaps just text the next set of Wise Men, assuming they hadn't been arrested and held without trial or charge because their Middle-Eastern appearance made them look suspicious.

Joseph, the cuckolded husband, did take his new infant stepson and his wife to the census decreed by the Roman authorities, passing the group of No2ID protestors. And the civil servant did ask him if truly he deserved the Job Seeker's Allowance and had he been actively seeking work while they asked his wife to bring forth the child's true father who was ordered to pay maintenance and admit responsibility before she could claim Child Benefit payments. And thus it was that Joseph was told to get on his donkey and look for a job, but lo the best paid carpentry jobs had all been taken by Polish immigrants and he was forced to take a position in Lidl.

Government loses millions of citizen's personal records

In recent years we've seen a continual line of data screw-ups from government departments, from lost records to leaving laptops with Defence Ministry data on them in cars to be stolen to the Department of Health putting all the personal information of junior doctors on a new national system up online with not even a basic level of password protection so anyone, anywhere could access confidential data. But today Alistair Darling (my local MP, I'm afraid to say, the Edinburgh politician who once famously referred to the Scottish Parliament as 'the Scottish Assembly' - I keep voting against the bugger but he never takes the hint) revealed a truly massive cock-up: H.M. Revenues & Customs have managed to lose discs containing confidential data on some 25 million individuals.

That's almost half the bloody population of the UK - basically these incompetent morons put all this data (which includes National Insurance numbers, bank details, date of birth, children, partner... A fraudster's dream ticket) onto a couple of CDs (what century are they living in?) and had them couried to another department (which is against best practise according to the data watchdog), except they went missing and now they have no idea where they went (which is presumably why the data watchdog says they're not meant to do it this way). And it turns out these irresponsible shagwits did this back on the 18th of October according to the BBC; it wasn't reported to the senior managers until 8th of November, the Chancellor (Alistair Darling) on the 10th then he deigned to tell the House of Commons and the citizens of the country today ten days after that. He blames the banks for this delay in telling people saying they demanded time to prepare for possible identity thefts or bank frauds if this information is found and mis-used, but I fail to see why this meant he waited ten more days to tell the House - sounds like they were trying to think on how to limit the damage, or perhaps just pray they would find the missing discs and keep quiet on the whole thing.

This is the same government who urges us all to be aware of identity theft, the same government who wants local doctors to agree to a national system where patient's medical records are put onto a national database despite the fact most doctor's have clearly said no, they believe the system would be too open, the wrong people could access patient's details and it would destroy patient-doctor confidentiality (you have to admit, given the constant string of incompetence in all matters to do with data security and information technology in the government they have a good point). This is the same bunch of power-hungry politicos who have been trying to ram a biometric ID card system down the throat of a reluctant British electorate for years (for our security, presumably so if you are shot in the face by police mistaking you for a terrorist they can tell your family who you are from your ID card, assuming the details on it are actually right, which they probably won't be). Yeah, sure, here's all my data in one handy, easy to alter or steal file that tons of civil servants can access anytime...

As Jon Snow asked a government minister wriggling in his seat on Channel 4 News tonight, how can this government continue to push for a national biometric ID system (and a national DNA database) when they clearly cannot be trusted to safeguard personal information on citizens? Liberal Democrat Vince Cable touched on the same point: "After this disaster how can the public possibly have confidence in the vast centralised databases needed for the compulsory ID card scheme?" I'm sure they will still try to force it through, of course. Meantime the numpties at HMRC don't even have anything on their homepage to inform the millions of citizens they've just left vulnerable, which is pretty pathetic considering it is the very, very least they should have done instead of leaving worried people to have to glean information (belatedly) released to the press after Darling decided he couldn't stall any longer.