Big Brother looks set to get even bigger if officials have their way and Parliament approves the creation of a communications database containing records on all phone calls and internet activity in the United Kingdom.

Figures estimate the number of text messages sent in a year to be 57 billion and the number of emails sent in a day to be 3 billion. This in itself raises questions as to whether the government could feasibly pull off an IT project on this scale, in light of NHS IT systems for England that are now 4 years overdue.

Nevertheless, the bigger question is obviously whether we should trust the government with that much personal information. At the minute, phone companies have to keep logs for 12 months which allows the authorities access to specific records if/when there is justification. Under the new system the authorities would supposedly still have to go through the courts to get access, but this blogger can see the line between government agencies being blurred and/or diluted much more quickly than between a government agency and a phone company, leading to a culture where more casual use of the system is the norm.

Even if (and it's a big if) we trust the government not to abuse the power, do we really want all that information held in a single place by a government that has already lost details on:

• 3 million driving test candidates
• 25 million child benefit claimants (all families in the UK with a child under 16)
• 7,685 Northern Irish drivers
• 40,000 benefit claimants in Yorkshire

and god knows what else (that only took a few minutes on Google and it ignores some cases I found that only involved local government).

Of course there must be a good reason why the government would propose this sort of plan; they wouldn't do it for no reason. The assistant Information Commissioner explains:

We are not aware of any justification for the state to hold every UK citizen's phone and internet records. We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable.
Jonathan Bamford, Assistant Information Commissioner

So there you have it. I don't believe it'll ever see the light of day but the fact that officials are even contemplating it is slightly alarming.

I've been doing some student loan thinking recently, just to check where I am.

The interest rates, contrary to my belief up to now, is set on RPI inflation, not base rate. Thats not the government's rate of 3%, but the actual rate of 4.8%, which as you can see, is double what it was the year before, but half of what it was in 1990.

HMRC have a very useful page detailing how the repayments are made. Basically, you have 9% of everything above £1,250 a month taken from your pay packet. That means if you're earning £18,000 a year, as in the HMRC example you'll be paying back £22 a month.

My interest payments are currently running at more than twice that per month.

I'm a bit of a fan of the Gerry Anderson show on Radio Ulster. Hence, I'm also a big fan of On the Air. This weeks edition is absolutely hilarious. Take a look.

Have a read of Chekov's piece on the Bel Tel/MORI poll last week. The data set is fascinating. The voting intention figures are bunkem as usual (DUP 20%, UUP 14%, SDLP 13% SF 11% APNI 7%), but it's interesting that Reg, Michael and Margaret Ritchie are once again significently more popular than some of their DUP and SF colleagues, and once again come out in the top half.

I thought this picture was priceless in yesterdays Irish News.

A judge from the Republic has branded people from Tyrone as typically thick.

It would seem difficult to disagree with him were it not for the fact that it was his own justice administration making a fuck-up that put her there in the first place.

His comments came after a woman from Donaghmore was wrongly summonsed to court because her details matched those of another woman and, being from Northern Ireland, she didn't have any Euros on her to pay to have the case thrown out.

Edit: Apparently this is the same judge who responded to a defendant who gave his address as Londonderry by saying he "didn't want to see this rubbish coming before him again" and that as far as he was concerned it was "just Derry with a capital D."

People in glass houses, your honour.

The Conservatives are the last party I'd expect to be complaining about police heavy-handedness but apparently, following huge trouble in Manchester after the city was flooded with up to 100,000 Rangers fans descending on the city for the UEFA cup final, that's exactly what happened.

According to the BBC

The Scottish Conservatives said using riot police was an "overreaction".

The BBC have kindly also included a video that clearly shows there was a riot in progress. If using riot police in a riot is an 'overreaction', what exactly are riot police for?

I've heard some shite come from the local whingers about police "heavy-handedness", that's just par for the course here, but one would expect better from real politicians.

Another one for the "What the hell is she thinking?" scrapbook. Everyone's favourite tennis star Caitriona Ruane has finally put forward her proposals for ending academic selection... by not quite ending it? Well not quite, not yet. Maybe.

It seems as if she's done exactly what Basil McCrea predicted she would, i.e. "cobble together a last-minute proposal", when she realised she wasn't going to get her way by shouting louder than her opponents, stamping her feet and quickly burying her head in the sand.

A new type of transfer test will be put together to run over three years from 2008-2001. The test will cover a broader range of topics than the current one and grammar schools may only be allowed to select between 20% and 50% of their pupils.

Nothing has changed. She still hasn't got the power to ban academic selection, and there is no way in hell this half-assed, mish-mash "policy" (using the term in the loosest possible sense) will prevent those grammar schools committed to maintaining their high standards from implementing their own test, rendering the whole exercise a pointless and expensive waste. But who cares about the cost of egalitarian dogma when it's not your cash?

I watched a quiz on TV recently where there was a multiple choice question (roughly) as follows: In what country is the stock exchange known as the BSE?
A. India B. Japan C. Thailand

I knew Japan has the Nikkei and I knew Bombay had been changed to Mumbai. I also "knew" this was because the British colonists had misinterpreted the natives saying "Mumbai" as Bombay* (sounds plausible if you imagine Mumbai in an Indian accent). Not able to think of any other Indian cities beginning with B, I concluded it must be in Bangkok, Thailand.

Apparently not. India's main stock exchange is still the Bombay Stock Exchange.

"So what?" I hear you cry. I'll not pretend this has a major impact on Northern Ireland, though I there may be a few parallels with our own Stroke City. Apparently the Bombay Stock Exhchange, Bombay Times, Bombay High Court and Bombay Scottish School are now being targeted by vandals who enjoy the support of a nationalist political grouping (the "Army of Shiva") who have been accused of orchestrating violence against Muslims. 12 years ago they succeeded in having Bombay redesignated Mumbai. What was Madras is now Chenai, Calcutta is Kolkata and there are calls for Goa to be renamed Govapuri.

It's been a busy few weeks for those following the debate over the national stadium plans for the Maze.

A matter of a couple of weeks before Peter Robinson is due to make his 'recommendation' to the Executive over the Maze plans, it has emerged John Sweeney, the Permanent Secretary of DCAL ( the deparment headed by Edwin Poots, the Maze's head cheerleader - nothing to do with the fact that the Maze is practically in his back garden of course), has refused to endorse DCAL's assessment of the plans. A senior civil servant is quoted as saying the Maze proposal "doesn't stack up" and that adding the extra 8,500 seats to the original 30,000 doubled the expected costs.

This comes only a couple of weeks after a report identified no less than 5 potential sites for a stadium in Belfast that it says are "better suited" to hosting a large sports stadium.

Those potential sites are Maysfield Leisure Centre, Ormeau Park and the North Foreshore (nothing new there) as well as relative newcomer Danny Blanchflower and, out of nowhere, Boucher Road playing fields.

The week before that, the Amalgamation of Northern Ireland Supporters Clubs released a highly critical response to the PwC business case for the Maze, which was finally released at the start of this year after what seemed like years of waiting.

They're coming from all sides today.

O'Neill's ever-watchful eye has picked up that Wales's GVA per head is only 77% of the UK average, (down from 79% when the Assembly was set up in 1999 and 84% back in 1991) despite receiving more than £1bn of EU aid to boost economic activity, placing them firmly at the bottom of the UK league table. Never mind, as long as the Bank of England, the Olympic Delivery Authority and the Carbon Trust have to "deliver services" in Welsh, what does wealth matter?

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland where the GVA is 81% of the UK average (that figure is unchanged since 1997 and currently sees us tying with north-east England for second-last spot), devolution seems to be having similar levels of success. According to a MORI poll conducted last month (spotted by Chekov in a report in the Belfast Telegraph):

• 21% of people polled think the Executive has done a good job in the last year since it was reinstated while 28% rated their collective performance as poor.
• 72% of people asked thought devolution had failed to make any difference on their lives.
• 46% thought devolution had had no impact on Ulster's economy and 10% thought it had made it worse.
• The Health Service fared even worse: 67% thought devolution had had no impact, while 16% thought devolution had improved it and another 16% thought it had made it worse.

The BBC's Mark Devenport claims the "most obvious achievement of the current executive is that it is still in existence" and our own First Minister yesterday extolled the current setup as "not perfect and not wholly democratic, but the best [he] could get for the people of Northern Ireland" - not exactly glowing recommendations, are they?

Perhaps now would be a good time to reflect on the bill for devolution.

A few successes at the US:NI investment conference yesterday, despite the worrying economic outlook in the United States.

US company CyberSource have announced they will be creating 20 new jobs (rising to 60 in three years) in a new research centre to be based in Northern Ireland. Belfast-based financial services company Wombat, recently purchased by the New York Stock Exchange, will also be creating 77 new jobs. Bombardier Aerospace are investing £70m to underpin 1000 jobs at Belfast engineering firm Shorts, mostly to work on parts of the new CRJ1000 lower-emissions short-haul aircraft (although £10m of that is coming from from Invest NI).

The numbers may be small but I'd hazard a guess that, long-term, 100-150 well paid graduate jobs will prove much more significant than employing 800 battery hens in the north-west (although I suppose anything is better than the Derry Disability Living Allowance).

So, are Invest NI setting their sights too low by opening an office in Mumbai to attract more Indian firms to create call centre jobs here? Or are they just aiming for what's achievable?

The Sewel Convention states that if Westminster is to legislate for Scotland, it must seek the permission of the Scottish parliament first. It is somewhat different, in that the Assembly couldn't have made this decision at present but the Government has decided to legislate for Northern Ireland against the expressed wish of a majority of the Assembly.

I wont comment on the substance of the legislation in question, but if they're willing to pull a 'nanny knows best' stunt with the age of consent, no one should be under the illusion they wouldn't do it with an aberration of normality posing as a bill of rights.

If the Sewel Convention ever applied to Northern Ireland, the Government has just sought to let us know that it doesn't anymore. This throws out the window any promises the DUP made on the Irish Language Act, the protection of academic selection, anything. Mark Devenport suggests that this is nothing more sinister than a throwback to the Hain days. I wish I were so sure.

UPDATE: Seems I was wrong. Page 8 and 9 here say "This convention was adopted from the previous experience of devolution in Northern Ireland and the convention applied to the new Northern Ireland Assembly." Page 5 here states "These arrangements – Sewell, JMC – apply equally in Northern Ireland and Wales." haven't been able to find anything on the DCA website though.