It's 11:58 do you know where your data are?

The Guardian is reporting that HM Revenue and Customs consciously choose to send more data than the National Audit Office desired to arguing cost. These are data on the 25 millions Brits receiving child benefit that went missing in the privatised post. HM R&C didn't want to bother to strip out only the elements that the NAO required, these did not include bank account details, and instead would appear just to have dumped the entire database. Now I know nothing about the structure of R&C's applications but I cannot believe that they do not have enquiry tools available that would have allowed a moderately capable programmer to provide the stripped down data with less than a half day's work.

Someone was just too bloody lazy and told porkies to justify it!