Gavin’s Gaily Gigest

Tip for design types: When putting together a new logo, like say this for the Office of Government Commerce …

… Always check how it will look side on, especially if the logo is going to appear on mousemats and pens:

Hat-tip: Dizzy, Comment Central and The Register, where you can find out more about […]

[Read more →]

Just when you thought you couldn’t be surprised, the Labour government have displayed their ingenuity and previously untapped skill at losing or misplacing data once again, this time by ignoring a Dutch DNA data disc sent to them a year ago, only running checks on it against the UK DNA database this month and finding […]

[Read more →]

Discussing the Northern Rock nationalisation on The Today Programme, former FSA chairman Howard Davies:
"… the government has become a sovereign wealth fund"

You can listen to the full 08.10 discussion here (MP3 format).

[Read more →]

Northern Rock is the gift that keeps on giving for the opposition parties, as the BBC’s Business Editor Robert Peston is reporting on BBC News 24 right now that emergency legislation will be put to the House of Commons tomorrow nationalising the beleagured bank, probably wiping out its share price and marking the first full-scale […]

[Read more →]

Via just about everywhere comes Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable’s contribution to the Northern Rock debate in the Commons yesterday:
"I am tempted to recall the Danish economist, Hans Christian Andersen, who told the story of the two conmen who visited a particularly credulous king to sell him an imaginary suit of gold to cover […]

[Read more →]

Speaking to News at Ten last night, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that Peter Hain’s failure to declare all donations to his deputy leadership campaign was:
"… a mistake that was made. It was an incompetence that he has readily admitted to"

That means that what we’ve all long suspected is now official - being incompetent is […]

[Read more →]

Listen to this article:

Donations to political parties have reared their ugly, corrupted head once again, this time involving the walnut-coated Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain and Piers Fletcher-Dervish impersonator and Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne. Actually, calling political donations “ugly” isn’t quite right. If anything, donations are the diamond-encrusted face-lifted darling of the political […]

[Read more →]

The morning after the 3.30pm statement before, I’m still flabbergasted by this single paragraph:
“Two password protected discs containing a full copy of HMRC’s entire data in relation to the payment of child benefit was sent to the NAO, by HMRC’s internal post system operated by the courier TNT. The package was not recorded or registered. […]

[Read more →]