British secrets? Take one please

I am having to contain myself here. Someone who I respect very much works at the Ministry of Defence, and I am sure it is made up of very earnest and hard-working people.

So I separate the people at the Ministry of Defence from the corporate body which is "The Ministry of Defence" - if that makes any sense (probably not, in which case go swiftly onto another blog, please).

Suffice it to say that I had some experience of observing "The Ministry of Defence" during the denouement of the Greenham Common saga (said Common being about a mile from my home - or 300 yards if you count a bit of green which is historically part of it).

Getting information or concessions out of "The Ministry of Defence" during that saga was a bit like trying to extract a digested three-penny bit from the wrong end of a duck. Difficult.

In fact, I dined out several times on my little aphorism about the MOD. It was: If you ask the Ministry of Defence what date Christmas Day is on this year they will tell you that they can't release that information in the interests of national defence.

Nuff said.

So, I am very sorry. I am very very sorry. It may be unpatriotic of me but I allowed myself several guffaws this evening when I read this story. It is beyond a joke and leaps into the realms of complete farce. I think it is British to laugh at these things.

I mean, for goodness sake. You could get enough secrets onto a memory stick to overturn the entire balance of power of the World. The Ministry of Defence have lost 100 of the things. And they have lost 650 laptops in the last four years. 20,000 laptops have been recalled because they forgot to encrypt them properly. Derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I mean come on! Iran? Korea? Syria? Just come along and take our secrets. The Ministry of Defence are too busy turning down requests for legitimate information from British citizens to worry about real security.

With repeated apologies to those who work at the Ministry of Defence.