MP grills hack

Well done to this Labour peer for having a go back at the ludicrous salary paid to Carrie Gracie, BBC News presenter.

Why Donington needs to be saved

I am, as you may have gathered, vastly excited by the prospect of Formula One coming to Leicestershire in 2010. I love my home, I love F1 and I love Donington Park as a race track.

But legal and financial troubles with the renovation of the circuit seem to be doggedly getting in the way and could put not just the Donington race but the British Grand Prix as a whole event in jeopardy - and that is not just a sad day for British F1 fans, but a disastrous one for the sport and the nation.

It is believed that the Grand Prix coming to Donington will be worth over £50 million to the East Midlands economy every year, a sum unequalled by any other single annual sporting event. But it is not just the economy of the East Midlands that would suffer should the track fail to live up to expectations, it is the whole economy of the nation.

Bernie Ecclestone, F1's rights holder, has pledged to wipe the British round off the World Championship calendar should Donington fail to be completed on time or fail the FIA's safety and technical examinations. And the loss of the British Grand prix could spell the end in the UK for an industry worth billions.

Look at the F1 teams on the current grid and spot where they're based. McLaren are based in Woking, Red Bull in Milton Keynes, Williams near Oxford, Force India at Silverstone and Brawn in Brackley. Even Renault, who run as a French team, are based at Enstone in Oxfordshire with a mostly British team. This leaves just four teams based outside the UK, and this means that the technical and manufacturing base F1 brings to Britain is simply huge.

Any high-end business will gather suppliers and associates around it, and F1 teams are no different. Every team needs access to windtunnels, specialised software programmers not to mention manufacturers of car parts, helmets, uniforms... The list of related businesses is quite simply staggering.

So it is not because I'm proud and couldn't show my face if a Leicestershire council jeapodised our sporting heritage - it is because I'm scared that, in these dark and frightening economic times, the loss of the British Grand Prix could spell the end of countless jobs.

Forty years since a leap into the unknown

Forty years ago today, Concorde made her first flight from the UK as she took off from an airfield near Bristol.

It was a momentus occasion and still stands up against NASA landing men on the moon as one of The Greatest engineering achievements. That Concorde flew at all is a miracle, that she was serving until 2004 is just remarkable.

But she did fly - and many people saw her and a lucky few even flew in her, unlike the moon landings which are constantly under scrutiny from conspiracy theorists.

But today we can no longer travel past the speed of sound, and that's a great shame. It means that we can no longer arrive in the USA before we set off, which in a time of constant advance is a terrible thing.

F1 points overhauled

The World Motor Sport Council has approved changes to the way in which the Formula One drivers' championship will be scored. From 2009, the driver with the most grand prix wins will be crowned champion.

In one sense, this is a very good thing and should make it more competitive at the front; no longer will anyone be settling for second place, losing just two points to the race winner. No, they will need to battle for the lead, and that will be fantastic.

Unfortunately, for Brits at least, the new method of organising the championship would see half of our world champions stripped of their titles - most of all Lewis Hamilton, who would have lost out to Felipe Massa under the new system. It means the consistency and reliability of Hamilton and his McLaren would fail to be recognised - and Robert Kubica, whose fantastic consistency last season saw him challenge for the title until just three races remained (despite only winning once) would be completely redundant.

It is just going to emphasise the gap between the frontrunners and the rest. And that is clearly not good in a season where rule changes are meant to be rewarding the smaller teams.

Well done, once again, F1 - for shooting yourselves in the foot yet again.

*Secure* Digital?

Some Scottish policemen have lost a memory stick containing data on around 750 'vehicles of interest'. This, clearly, is not good. And questions must be asked as to how the stick was lost, and (as has happened) a search launched to retrieve the device.

But I have something more profound to ask - what the hell were they thinking, putting sensitive information on a USB pen drive?!

It isn't new - it's happened a few times in local government and with subcontractors to Whitehall, as well to police forces and the NHS. Clearly, lessons have not been learnt. These data are clearly sensitive and are probably banned from being used outside of the confines of whichever office they belong in, so why on earth do they need to be stored on a memory stick?

These agencies all have centralised computer systems - secure computer systems - most of which will have some form of access from the outside world so that police officers, for example, can access criminal records on the move. This surely makes the need to store data in multiple places - and on something as small and easily misplaced as a USB stick - completely redundant.

Systems are in place to try and encourage users to not use USB drives and rely on network infrastructures, at least in local government, so why are these problems persisting?

Look closer and we see that it's not the MPs, civil servants, PCs and nurses that are losing the data. It is instead the employees of subcontracted private companies that are being entrusted with our personal data with such carelessness. So whilst we cannot - and must not, for crying out loud - subject our councils and government to a tirade of abuse for losing our data, we can question Downing Street for as to why our data is not being kept by the agencies that use it.

The scary thing is exactly that - we have a NHS, police forces and authorities that are subject to public scrutiny. But they are giving our information away to private companies whose motives are entirely unclear.

In praise of 3 mobile

From what the blogosphere has said about 3's customer services, I was expecting a nightmare when I contacted them to see if I could downgrade my contract to something cheaper.

I emailed them at the weekend, because it's easier and cheaper, and I expected that they'd reply within a few weeks. They didn't. They rang me this afternoon and I can't say a bad word against them.

The Indian lady in 3's Delhi call centre could not have been more helpful. She had clearly read - or been well informed - of what I wanted to do, and she explained clearly and neatly what changing to a new tariff would entail and how it wouldn't be worth my while (I'm on a promotional tariff, see). She offered to help me set up mobile broadband (I was looking into it, hence wanting my phone charges to be lowered) and was just generally polite, helpful and seemed to understand what she was talking to me about, which makes a change from visiting most phone or computer shops.

I've been on my contract for six months so far, and have been impressed with everything throughout - from subscribing online to coverage, call quality and price. Yes, I've had a couple of call drops, but I think they've been more to do with my buggy handset - they're happening increasingly often as I install more apps and fill up the phone's memory - than the network.

So thank you to that anonymous Indian lady, and let people read this in praise of the good experience I've had with 3.

The broadband right

Speculation has been rife in the media this week regarding the government's commitment to new schemes to roll-out high-speed broadband links across the country. My question is not of how they should afford the reported £25 billion investment needed to provide fibre-to-home for every home in the country, but why they haven't said they are going to do it already.

In the midst of an economic recession - with a rising jobless class and ever-increasing big-money bailouts of banks, car companies and who knows what else - it seems ridiculous that large government schemes to get the labour force back in work and stimulate the grassroots supply economy have not been more seriously considered. And a large-scale communications infrastructure rollout would create hundreds of thousands of construction and technical jobs, not to mention those for the manufacture and supply of cabling, switches, those odd little Green Boxes and more.

Already we have rumours that the development of Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers and the new Astute submarines have had their construction 'delayed' so as to keep those working on the projects in employment for as long as possible. So why are the government so reluctant to invest in high-speed Internet infrastructure? Not to mention a high-speed railway network.

It seems they don't know what's good for the country, and like each and every government they are far too focused on their five years in power to worry about such frivolus things as the economy, climate change or the general wellbeing of the populace - unless doing something drastic in any of these fields would win them votes. But, as people don't know what's good for them and governments can only pander to the whim of the public... we're stuck in a rut. Forever.

So vote Tory. Or Lib Dem, Green, UKIP or even Labour - it doesn't matter. Because whatever the outcome, unless some radical party actually forms a majority government, we'll stay in the ten-year(ish) boom/bust cycle the Tories are so quick to blame Brown for.

The fact that they'd do nothing different out of the fear of losing the vote seems to be of total insignificance. Because it is.