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

This is a truly brilliant idea. Sarkozy is issue his ministers with an "end of term report card" which will be based on 30 indicators specific to their portfolio for Cabinet ministers, and results in 15 areas for junior ministers. Such a brilliant idea!

If a government is truly be accountable to citizens, it must be possible to know precisely how they are performing - and this is an utterly brilliant way to do it.

Now, has anyone got any ideas about the sort of marks that should be given to our government ministers...? I doubt that anyone of them would score very high.

Government departments really are just haemorrhaging data about us, the people, who give them this personal information because they require that we give it to them. First the HMRC lost the personal financial details of 25 million people. Then we find out that they have also lost six other discs with our data on it. Then it came out that the details of 3 million learner drivers has been lost. And now the NHS is at it:

So posting discs certainly isn't a one-off or even rare occurrence in the public services, but apparently standard practice!

Even though none of this is directly the fault of ministers of the government, they are responsible for it nonetheless. They have consistently failed over the last decade to ensure that our data is dealt with in the proper confidential manner. And these are the people who want us to give them all of our details, to be collated in one place as part of an ID card scheme! No bloody way.

What these stories show is that it is not possible for the State to be trusted with any more of our data than absolutely necessary - and that this data should be spread out with as little as possible in one place.

And there's one more point to consider - all of these stories have only "emerged" as a result of the investigation after the original massive loss by HMRC. Would they have bothered to tell us about any of these had that not come to light itself?! I very very much doubt it.

Bloody hell, the government really is just crap at looking after our data, isn't it!

My details were almost certainly among those lost, and I am by no means pacified by Ruth Kelly apologising for “any uncertainty or concern” caused, especially since sorry seems to be the easiest word for Labour minister to say under Brown.

They were lost in May for crying out loud! Why did they not at least tell us that they had lost it? This isn't however the fault of Ruth Kelly, who was only informed of this on 28th November. Stephen Ladyboyman most certainly can be, however, as he was told of this loss of data on June 4th, and whatever he did didn't tell people like me whose details are more than likely to have been lost and potentially in the hands of fraudsters. What is staggering , however, is that even though nothing had been done about this loss of data on the government's behalf, they only told the new Secretary of State after the government had lost the details of 25m other people.

I wonder, if that hadn't have happened, would she - let alone us - ever have been told?!

What this does is demonstrate categorically that the State cannot be responsible for any more of our personal data than absolutely essential. Even what it currently holds is too much, and certainly even the thought of this incompetent bunch of morons ever getting hold of enough information to make an ID card should make all intelligent people very, very scared.

UPDATE: Ladyboy defends doing bugger-all about this because he "assumed the new minister would've been told about it." Why didn't you do something about it yourself? Or would that have meant that you would actually have to had earned your pay? Read Mr Eugenides' comments on this issue.