A Bump in the Night

Our thirteen year old Ford Ka got hit by a Taxi (a huge Vauxhall Vivavoo or some such tank).

It was parked when the iceberg struck.

Ok it's a grotty Ka. Get your jokes out of the way. I liked it, it was useful, reliable,cheap and it worked. A bit like the original model T.

Well, it worked apart from when I lost my keys in Hamsterley Forest, but let's not go there right now.

Anyway...the car was hit over the front wheel arch. The taxi driver knew he'd hit but he drove off anyway.

The Ka was towed back. The insurance broker was contacted as were the police (the driver leaving the scene without providing details was, of course,  an offence)

The police turned up and were jolly decent. But when it came to the insurance brokers....

They couldn't arrange a replacement vehicle as they couldn't trace the other driver's insurers. There was a possibility he wasn't insured. Naturally no insurance meant no replacement car ...and the insurer couldn't trace any insurance policy for the other driver.

Eventually we found that the other driver was insured with the same broker as us. Simple then. Tell that to the broker and Bob's your uncle.

So I rang the broker with the good news.

" I'm sorry sir, we can't do that. It's contrary to the Data Protection Act and we take the Data Protection Act very seriously.

I spluttered a little at this point.

"Surely not?"

"Yes sir. It's contrary to the Data Protection Act and we take the Data Protection Act very seriously."

"So you're sitting at one desk and you can't tell the person sitting next to you the details of the other driver?"

"I'm afraid not, sir. It's contrary to the Data Protection Act and we take the Data Protection Act very seriously."

I rang head office.They told me they couldn't do anything. It had something to do with them taking the Data Protection Act very seriously.

Well even superficially this was all bollocks.

Remember the story of the school that made wearing safety goggles compulsory when playing with conkers?. The headmaster of the school was interviewed years afterwards and he said yes he had made a rule to that effect, but that he was taking the micky out of Health a Safety legislation, or at least the public concept of Health and Safety.

It's the same with Data Protection. An act brought in for a very good purpose. But this wasn't it. Just like conkers and goggles and the Health and Safety Act, this wasn't it.

It was a joke

On the one hand organisations are scared that they might be infringing something and on the other hand it gives them a perfect excuse to do nothing whatsoever, and say that they can't do anything because of some law or other.

I did take the matter further. I wrote an email of complaint.

I got a reply

It said that they took data protection very seriously, and said they might allow one de[partment to talk to another department, but "that this would follow us asking relevant data protection questions and beige satisfied with the answers".

I did query what he meant by "beige" as I thought it might be a codeword or something, but the reply came back in the rather curt response:

"I apologise Mr Chalk, the word was being."

How surreal was that, then?

Coming Soon.....
Mission : Impossible 2: Access Denied