Plus ça change...

Or not.

I had a très rapide jaunt to Paris this weekend to attend the annual fête of Lutte Ouvrière (LO - Workers' Fight). This is the jamboree of one of the longest established of the French Trotskyist groups. The other long established French Trotskyist group, the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR - Revolutionary Communist League), dissolved itself last year to form, with others, the non-Trotskyist Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste (NPA - New Anti-capitalist Party). As far as I can tell, it is now suffering a massive crisis of identité and efficacité.

I have been to the LO fête for many years (though not every year). It's a lot of fun in the sun plus a chance to keep my rusty French going and meet up with some old friends. I can't actually remember how old I was when I first went but I must have been in my mid 20s. What a frightening thought.

Anyway, this weekend gave me, among other things, the chance to reflect on some of the things that have changed since I first attended. When I first went to LO fête the following were not ubiquitous and I at least could only have dreamed of them:

mobile phones
the internet
email
a tunnel under the Channel, and the Eurostar - it took practically all day to get to Paris.

We did, however, have a Tory government...

Political debate at a previous year's LO fete

A good day to trumpet bad news

The Register website, which reports on all things IT, says that Barnet council made the best of a bad PR job in the way it handled the news about its loss of 9,000 children's data.

The council could have slunk about till they were outed by the Information Commissioner's Office, but instead they managed the fallout by going public themselves and by judicious use of their website.

Adept at heading off deserved criticism - it's probably not the first thing that the council would like to be famous for. You can read the Register article here.

Barnet council fails to cost residents half a million

...on this occasion, but if they lose any more schoolchildren's data after 6 April they might be liable for a fine of up to £500,000. Currently, the maximum fine for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act is just £5,000 but it is going up from tomorrow. Phew! That was a close one.

Read a Tech Watch website report about the change here.
This is what Barnet council is saying on its website about its recent data loss.