More than 100,000 people in Kent have been added to the DNA database in the last five years it has been revealed. According to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act, 103,830 samples were taken and more than a quarter were from people under 18. Read more…
Month: February 2008
My folks have returned home
You know I’ve got great folks. They have lived in South Africa for the last 17 years, and this week I have been in the UK to welcome them back home again, now as pensioners. They have gone to live in Wales. I drove them there, the place where my dad spent a lot of his childhood.
It is strange being in the UK. I find it cold and damp. The houses are small and I can’t stand that people walk around with their shoes on, even with that terribly unhygenic wall-to-wall carpeting housing goodness knows what variety of germs. I guess I have become too European, if that is possible?
My folks are so easy to be pleased with the small things in life. It’s just a pleasure to be with them. They love taking a walk through the old town, to find a small market selling fresh meat, and the butcher making funny jokes, enough to motivate my mum to buy some fine pork chops. My dad loves the old book shops, and my mum the charity shops, and the coffee shops with the enormous variety of cakes asking to be eating displayed in the windows. They are renting a house, that is not a palace, and they just see warmth and a home. My dad is seeing the flowers that will pop up their heads in Spring, and the fine herb garden he will fix for my mum.
If we were all like my parents life would be so simple, no greed or jealously, just appreciation for what they have… which is not much, not bitterness for what they have lost. I applaud my folks, they are wonderful!
And the British govt wants MORE databases on our kids!
LOL are they mad, with their reputation on managing sensitive information, the British government is at it again. They want to have every 14-year-old in England with their exam results and personal details held on a central database. They will each be given a lifelong “learner number” – and employers will be able to check their exam results on a tamper-proof “online CV”. Read more…..
Thanks for this Neil!
Biometrics to open your hotel room door
This is almost old news…..In 2004, Nine Zero Hotel in Boston, part of the Kimpton chain, installed iris-scan technology in its penthouse suite. When guests check in at the lobby, a hotel employee takes a photo of their iris. Guests open the doors by flashing their iris once again while standing in front of the lock’s iris image reader. But there is more here…
New code of practice in UK for CCTV with sound
Firms may have to revise their use of closed-circuit television to monitor workers following the publication today of a new code of practice by the Information Commissioner’s Office. Read more…
Work begins to repair severed net
Interesting article about the cables that are keeping our Internet up and running.
“Work has begun to repair two damaged internet cables in the Mediterranean Sea that were severed last week.”
Bill to provide protection from sexual predators on the Internet
Sorry been a bit quiet lately, been busy finishing the book. Came across this article today, interesting.Read more..
New York’s attorney general and state legislative leaders presented a bill on Tuesday aimed at protecting people from sexual predators on the Internet, as Facebook, MySpace and Yahoo backed the effort.