pumpkinstrokemarrow

I imagine the IT security industry has been knocking back the champagne big time over the last few days. They are going to get an orgy of business as paranoid civil service middle managers fall over themselves to spend money on IT security. All those second division IT security bores and pedants will have a job for life patrolling the lower reaches of civil service life. It is not even as if we had a good class security breach - from some member of the Russian special forces (speaking seven languages and able to kill a rhinocerous with her bare hands) infiltrating some inner sanctum of Whitehall or perhaps someone from the refuge on a jihad. Just a very banal - if very serious - security breach. Why didn't the people at the NAO blow the whistle when they received unprotected material? Maybe their boss was too busy on first class treats with his wife in the margins of teaching the Uighars how to do audits to worry about low grade breaches nearer home. I hope it is not just the careless oik at the bottom of the heap and the unfortunate mandarin at the top that take the hit. What about the middle managers who permitted such carelessness and who ought to know better? Not really good enough to say that the oik in question breached standing rules and leave it at that.

Quite by chance, now the possessor of a splendid new table lamp. Came across the base at an antique show - an elaborately carved hollow wooden column, about 18 inches high and reminding me of one of those lotus bud capitaled Egyptian columns. The wood is very hard, has a wonderful texture to the touch (greasy is the word that comes to mind although there is no grease there) and appears to have been stained on the outside a uniform dark brown, while the inside is left with muted yellow and brown stripes. Can't imagine that the interior could have been hollowed out by hand so neatly without some sort of mechanical aid so the thing can't be very old. The lady who sold it thought perhaps Burmese, perhaps on the strength of the two figures included in the carving, one a male with a bow, the other probably a female. A bit of jiggery pokery required to fit a lamp holder to the top of the thing as the cable hole had been drilled to wide for the lamp holder plate to be fixed over it. And oddly, the groove in the base to allow the cable out had been very crudely cut - as if that had been done later and not by the original carver - although the holes in base and top through which to lead the cable up were very neat and tidy and looked very much to have been made at the time of original manufacture. Fortunately the crude groove was very small and could be tidied up.

Getting on with Miers on gambling law. Now deep into the mysteries of the history of the law of betting on horses. There seemed to be various issues. First, lots of people wanted to play. And some of them came from the highest reaches of society, of government even. There might even have been the odd racing bishop. Second, lots of people cheated. Lots of people ran betting swindles of one sort or another. There was a need for some sort of regulation. Third, the racing of horses would hardly exist at all without betting. That is what makes it all worth while. Fourth, in the nineteenth century anyway, there were lots of people who thought that any sort of gambling was evil and had to be stamped out. One subset of this lot were particularly concerned that the working classes might be betting and enjoying themselves, rather than being about their proper business of creating wealth for the upper classes. Another subset was concerned that they could not make blue water between gambling on horses (which was clearly evil) and gambling on the stock exchange (which was clearly an essential part of a successful capitalist economy). All goes to show what fun one can have when trying to ban something that lots of people want to do. I imagine that the lawyers of the day made quite a good thing of it all. All reminds one of the debate that we have today about recreational drugs. Well, sort of debate. Not of a very high standard.