One Rule For One...

The Northern Rock debacle goes on. And on.

Not content with shovelling shedloads of British taxpayer's money into the bottomless pit that is Northern Rock; not content with shelling out ninety thousand pounds each and every month for a "Saviour" to drag the bank out of growing chaos, our increasingly unfathomable Government have this week tried to exempt this fiasco from its Freedom of Information legislation.

In other words, to prevent the public from finding out how public money is being used to 'rescue' the bank.

This is even more strange coming as it does from the very Government who introduced the Freedom of Information Act in the first place. The legislation specifically states that nationalised institutions - err, like Northern Rock for instance? - must be subject to its provisions...

Fortunately, Opposition Leader in the House of Lords Lord Strathclyde managed to defeat this cynical nonsense, voting instead for an independent audit of the books within three months followed by an annual audit so we can see where our money is going.

The whole story reminded me of last year's Government settlement to Kent County Council. Despite some of the best local government finance officers in the land, we still could not work out how the Treasury had arrived at their figures. Since the Government had helpfully provided us with the Freedom of Information Act, we decided to use this to ask Government to explain its calculations. Their response? They wouldn't tell Kent how they had made up our settlement figure.

Sadly, the Government weren't prepared to allow Government legislation to be used to obtain information about the Government.

How does the saying go? One rule for one...

It could be your card that's being cloned

Last night, I wrote a posting about a Newsnight feature on the unreliable nature of chip and pin technology; about how Stephen Murdoch and Saar Drimer from the University of Cambridge had exposed the flaws in the system; about how high streets stores and banks had denied such weaknesses existed.

This morning, I found a response posted from Saar Drimer himself, thanking me for commenting on the article and attaching links to further information. Now isn't that how the Web should work?

This issue is critical to all of us - chip and pin is fast becoming the "only game in town" for banks and high street retailers. So we should expect those same banks and retailers to invest in plugging every known gap, every flaw, every shortcoming in their system.

A few minutes on BBC television can only scratch the surface. Saar and his Cambridge Computer Science colleagues have set up an excellent blogsite - "Light Blue Touchpaper" on their work, and the least I can do to thank Saar for his contact is to add the link to this to my Blog Roll on the right hand side of this screen.

Take a look - make yourself aware. It could be your card that's being cloned.

An Impossible Dilemma

I met with a constituent of mine this evening. He wanted to discuss some "problems" with me. Little did I know how difficult the conversation was going to be.

My constituent was in his seventies with a wife of around the same age. In the last few months, she had begun to show signs of dementia. He had immediately tried to have her assessed at a local NHS facility, but this had taken much longer to achieve than he at first thought. The reason for this, NHS staff had told him, was "cutbacks" - in budget, in staffing levels, in capacity.

Now his wife had been assessed, her condition had worsened and he was now told to look for a permanent residential care placement for her. And so the search began - for a residential care home which could handle clients with dementia. Somewhere that could cope with his wife's worsening condition, so she wouldn't be shunted from home to home as her condition became more complex.

And, because their finances exceeded £21,000 excluding property, they would be "self funding", although he did say that the NHS would contribute to the costs if weekly costs were greater than his level of disposable income.

His dilemma? "All the good local homes are full - there's no space anywhere. I don't want to put her miles away. And I'm driving myself mad thinking that - if there is a spare place - maybe that home isn't very good. Why does it have spare places? Why isn't it full up?"

I referred him to some KCC professionals who should be able to help him find a good placement for his wife, as well as our Online Care Directory - you can find this at http://www.kent.gov.uk/SocialCare/adults-and-older-people/residential-and-nursing-care/.

But I suspect none of us would want to have to make the decisions my constituent is having to confront, for all the tea in China. It's an impossible dilemma.

Quaking in their bed

Kent was one of several areas to experience an earthquake last night. Radio Kent's breakfast presenter John Warnett asked listeners to call in with their experiences of the incident.

Minutes later an email from "Jeremy from Canterbury" came in. "I was awake when the earthquake began" he told listeners. "..and I recall the precise moment the earthquake began. It was when my wife flopped down onto the bed.."

I assume his wife was listening to another station...

Opening the doors to our bank accounts?

Did anybody watch Newsnight tonight on BBC2?

There was a fascinating feature on the security of chip and pin systems - you know, the machines into which you put your card and tap in your PIN number when you're paying for goods electronically.

Two Cambridge University researchers - Stephen Murdoch and Saar Drimer, showed how easy it was to experiment on a PED (PIN entry device) which they bought for £30 on eBay. Eventually they found they could insert an extra wire onto the circuit board which would 'hijack' both card and PIN data for use in cloning fake cards.

Although "chip and pin" technology has brought down High Street fraud, the problem is simply displaced - often to Eastern Europe. In 2006 a total of £430m was lost to fraud, and almost a quarter of this, £99.6m was lost through cloned cards.

Banks, high street retailers, even industry watchdogs - all were quoted as saying they were "confident" that the pin entry systems were safe.

So how come two men with £30 to spend on eBay showed that it's anything but safe? Surely if our banks and retailers can increasingly refuse to take cash or cheques, we as consumers should insist that the systems used aren't opening the doors to our bank accounts?

The success story of a local open prison

Sunday's papers carried the story of G-TRIO, the Cessna 172 which crashed in a garden at Lyminge at the weekend, shortly after take off from Rochester. However, the story continues today with the news that the aircraft carried as its passenger an inmate from Blantyre House open prison in Goudhurst.

Whatever the reasons for a day-release prisoner flying around over Kent, whatever the poor judgement shown by the pilot leading to the crash, let's hope we don't see any fingers of blame pointing at the prison.

I recall visiting Blantyre and being really impressed by the culture, by the officers, and by the inmates, who were only too aware how lucky they were to be spending the last eighteen months of their sentence at this facility.

I later called in a work team from Blantyre to decorate the youth hut at Henwood Recreation Ground in Pembury. They were cheerful, friendly, hard working and the locals who met them had nothing but admiration.

So let's try to separate two stories - one involves the activities of a day release prisoner; the other is the success story of a local open prison.

It's the little wins that count

Regular readers of this blog will recall that I campaigned strongly against the Government's stance on television licencing, which penalised frail elderly people just out of hospital and recuperating in intermediate care homes.

It seemed that - even though they may have had a licenced TV set at home, they still had to purchase a TV licence for any set they might have watched whilst in recuperative care. The BBC itself covered the story - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/5051496.stm, as did Radio Four's "You and Yours" along with several national dailies, and every local paper, TV and radio station in Kent.

Kent on Sunday revisited this story last week - http://editions.pagesuite.co.uk//PageSuite3.aspx?page=1&scale=100&height=700&width=1000&editionid=46705&filekey=&path=_PSEDitions/Kos%20Media/Kent%20On%20Sunday%20-%20East%20Kent%20Edition/2008-02-10/ - "Thousands in Fear of TV Licencing Authority".

Today, however, I got an email from the TV Licensing Press Office:

"With reference to your comments in the attached article from Kent on Sunday, we thought you would be interested to know that the TV licensing regulations for care homes have now changed and people no longer need to buy an additional licence to cover them during respite stays in residential care.

"TV Licensing has a duty to enforce the licence fee and apply the law correctly, as we were doing at the time in the 2006 case mentioned. As the article states, we also assured you at the time that we would not prosecute people in the situation described.

"Given that the law has now changed, it is untrue to say that this matter affects "thousands of people" in Kent. TV Licensing has no reason to believe that people in Kent are unduly worried about their TV licence, but should you have evidence to the contrary, we would urge you to contact us, so that we can rectify the situation."

Does that mean "you were right, we're sorry and we've now changed the law"?

As they say, it's the little wins that count.