Last week several government databases decided I was living in Leeds again. Whilst I like Leeds, I'd quite like my post to end up in the same building that I'm living in. A few phone calls into the problem and the finger looks to be pointing at either the National Insurance Contributions Office or HMRC. I can't get through to NICO because all their lines are busy. As usual. However, as another department kindly sent me a letter saying they'd been in touch with HMRC about my tax code several days before things started going wrong, this is where I pick up the trail.

The British Council appear to have had an encrypted disk lost in the post. The BBC think this is news but don't appear to understand that nothing appears to have been done wrong.

This appears to be a courier service losing a securely encrypted disk during a routine information transfer. At which point this isn't newsworthy, it's something done right and nothing has been leaked.

I'm working my way through a Deep Space 9 box set. It might be a pale imitation of Babylon 5, but Star Trek was something I couldn't get enough of when I was younger. Now I'm not so fond of the utopian visions and hero-cheese chaotic good characters of TOS and TNG, but part of the magic of Star Trek is just how wrong and quickly obsolete the visions of technology is.

(I think I need to modify the quote module with s/wrote/said/g)

I get a phonecall:

Hello, it that Mr Charles [middle name removed for reasons of paranoia] Elwood?

Who's calling?

I'm very sorry, but I can't tell you that until you confirm your identity, are you Mr .....

You've not got the hang of this have you? If you're going to ask me to verbally authenticate myself you're going to have let me know who you are, or who you are calling on behalf of, so I can cross-reference the number.