Mission : Impossible

 Access Denied.

 

Ethan Hunt dangled like a pantomime fairy from his tether. Hanging in mid air whilst suspended from the ceiling was something he hadn't done since the office Christmas party.
The computer blinked on, like a blinking computer.
"Access Denied: You are not authorised for that security level."
"We cannot give you that information. If we do we'll have to kill you in various unpleasant and unlikely ways."
Ethan smirked his boyish smirk. A smirk he had inherited from his father, who had a fatherish smirk in later life.
Ethan heard heavy footsteps approaching, he knew he was running out of time. And cheese.
Ethan  knew he had to buy more cheese. He'd checked the fridge and he knew he was out of cheese.
And what was worse, was that he was almost out of time.
And cheese.
Quickly he employed his Special Forces training and accessed the highly secret website known as Google.
There it was! This was what he had been looking for.
Trembling, he typed in: "How the bloody hell do I find the details of another driver involved in an accident, then?"
It had taken precious seconds but finally.....there it was!
http://www.askmid.com/askmidenquiry.aspx
It had taken Ethan Hunt 4.5 minutes to access the information he needed.
If he had not been dangling from the roof with a fishing line tied to his pants it might have taken less.

So there you are.
Information denied by an insurance company is accessible to the public (if you've had an accident) on payment of....£3.75 to the Motor Insurance Database.Run by the DVLA. Official and that.
You can also get the information if you're a representative of the above.
This would include things like-er-insurance companies.
It doesn't cost them £3.75 though.
For them it's free.
Left right and centre people are telling us that something is impossible.
What they mean is "There's a piece of legislation out there. We don't know what it means and that means that you won't either. So in order to avoid doing anything about anything we'll just say:
It's a Data Protection/Health and Safety/ Prevention of Terrorism Act issue.
I'm currently complaining to the Financial Ombudsman.
I registered a complaint with Swinton first (you have to do that)
The reply came back. They didn't think they had done anything wrong. Their email contained, mysteriously, the following line:

"..........this would follow us asking relevant data protection questions and beige satisfied with the answers.." 

Ethan furrowed his brow with a brow furrow.

He asked them what that sentence meant, and why it contained that old KGB colour code.

Why it contained the word "beige"

Beige was known to be in the man in charge.
The Big Boss. The Head Honcho. Mister Big. The Emperor of Crime and Parts of Huddersfield.

They replied with a single enigmatic line:

 "I apologise ..... the word "beige"was meant to be the word" being."

But Ethan knew the truth.