Big Brother - not so bad.

The Government's suggestion that there should be a national database containing all the information held by its different Departments has, perhaps understandably, met with general opposition. For once, I'm on the Government's side. As a retired Civil Servant I can testify to the enormous amount of money being spent by individual Departments to collect information which is already held by another Department but which, under existing regulations, cannot be passed by the one to the other. It's a complete nonsense. Subject to stringent safeguards ensuring that such information stays within Government, it's just common sense that what one Department knows should be available to other Departments.