That's the end of that then

Gordon Brown admitted yesterday that ministers can never guarantee the security of sensitive data, after a memory stick containing user names and passwords for a government computer system was found in a pub car park.

That's really rather the end of the nation ID database then, isn't it? If they cannot keep such identities secret then by having all of our identity stored in one place, with one method of verification (the ID card itself) simply doesn't work as a method of protecting our identities, does it?

It was always true that the argument that ID cards were for us is a nonsense, but this admission simply shows that it's not just nonsense, it's invalid.

Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to stop them imposing it upon us.

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Barclays took the right path

The angry reaction to Barclays' decision to recapitalise using Middle Eastern money rather than a taxpayer bailout mystifies me. In my News of the World column today, I argue that Barclays may well become 30% Arab but its 100% correct. It has no duty to accept a UK taxpayer bailout over more expensive Arab money, as is widely suggested. Its duty, in fact, lies is in the reverse. A taxpayer bailout is supposed to be the last resort, preventing the banking system from collapse.

I'm glad that John Varley, Barclays' chief executive, realises...

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Daily Brief

Conventional wisdom in the markets says that risk equals reward. The riskier an investment is, the higher the reward an investor expects. Could the inverse be true, at least when it comes to executive compensation?

A recent study by economists at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Missouri found evidence that reducing C.E.O. pay -- or at least the portion of that pay in the form of stock options -- can result in less-risky corporate strategy, and improved profitability.

The study, "Earnings Restatements, Changes in C.E.O. Compensation, and Firm Performance," was written by Qiang Cheng, an...

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Unsympathetic Demographic of the Day: HENRYs

Do you pity the HENRYs ("high earners, not rich yet")? If you're Shawn Tully you do. In an astonishing feat of reporting, he's discovered that if you ask people whether they feel rich, especially if they work hard and have children, they're liable to say no, even if they're earning very large amounts of money:

Our cover subjects, Lindsay Mayer and her husband, Zach, a Dallas attorney, feel stretched on $500,000 a year. Lindsay, a senior manager at telecom provider Avaya, has also started her own small business on the side, investing $60,000 to launch a company

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Umm, evolution folks?

I can't really blame the Independent for this one....well, I can, but only their subs. The error appears to come from the original AP wire piece.

A rare reptile with lineage dating back to the dinosaur age has been found nesting on the New Zealand mainland for the first time in about 200 years.

There's this evolution thing you know? Every animal, all of us, each plant, we've all got a lineage that extends back to the dinosaur age....indeed, to before it, right back to the primordial slime mould.

I can't say that early evolutionary theory is a specialty of mine, but I'm pretty sure that no one's claiming that life has arisen on this planet more than just a few times. All of those times being some billions of years ago.

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