| Can Photo Clues Lead to Camera's Owner?
Ascher soon got an e-mail from a woman named Sarah Casey, whose sister Jeanette works at Playwrights. Suddenly everything Ascher had seen on the camera came to life. The Caseys recently had hosted relatives and friends from Ireland. The group included their friend Alan Murphy, who had journeyed to Florida with family before heading to New York, where the clan stayed at the Radisson. (Their Noel was not the Noel whom Ascher e-mailed.) Murphy ended the trip kicking himself for leaving his camera in a cab in the twilight on New Year's Eve. Sarah Casey agreed to send it to him. It didn't go to Ireland but to Sydney, Australia, where Murphy lives now. Murphy, an insurance underwriter, had been devastated to lose the pictures from a trip he had planned for years.
Second-class and lost in the post
Turns out HMRC routinely sends sensitive information around the country on discs. Earlier this month the details of more than 15,000 Standard Life customers, including pensions, were put on a disc and lost by a courier en route from HMRC in Newcastle to the Standard Life HQ in Edinburgh. Last month a laptop with data about 400 people with high-value Isas was stolen from the boot of a car belonging to someone at HMRC. Personal and financial details have been misdirected to wrong addresses or found in the street. Mr Darling looked shaky in the Commons, as well he might: first shaken by Northern Rock and now drowning in a flood of misplaced personal information. The Government's entire public IT agenda — all those systems and databases and supposed safeguards — is now under threat.
A lose-lose election for home buyers
BOTH Liberal and Labor housing policies will make Australia's debt and housing affordability crises worse. The only difference between the two is how much damage they will do. Both parties have promised tax-advantaged savings systems that will enable first-home buyers to accumulate larger deposits. This will help them compete with other buyers in the housing market, but the problem isn't a lack of competition among buyers. The real problem is that we've driven house prices far too high by devoting far too much borrowed money to buying houses. By increasing deposits while doing nothing about loans, both parties will only add fuel to the fire. The ALP gives the example of a two-income family, earning average wages, who could increase their deposit by $18,000 as a result of its scheme (and the Liberals' scheme is much the same).
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