Dad's Army?

So, a government department have just happened to lose a disc with the details of 25 million people on it, including in millions of cases, their bank details.

The Child Benefit data on them includes name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and, where relevant, bank details of 25m people.
Chancellor Alistair Darling said there was no evidence the data had fallen into criminal hands - but urged people to monitor their bank accounts.

Except, Mr Darling, that there isn't any evidence for it not falling into criminal hands, because the info has been lost. You don't know where it is, it has been misplaced and is no longer in your possession. Geddit?

All this comes only days after the Chancellor was called to face parliament regarding the Northern Rock situation.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Darling insisted that the government-backed loans given to the bank - currently worth about £24bn - must be repaid - and said that the lending was all guaranteed against "quality assets" including mortgages.

Now, Bank of England is the lender of last resort, but unfortunately even though people say it's independent, it's actually anything but. However, the government have lent the bank an awful lot of tax payers's money and we're not quite sure how we're going to get it back. Cue share prices falling some more.

I think the Treasury must have recently employed a new press officer?