Todays Times shows two great Masterpieces that may come upon the open Market.

Titians Diana and Actaeon (pictured) and Diana and Callisto have been offered to the government by the Duke of Sutherland for a mere £50 million each. 

I am sure that they are worth every penny, but there is no way that any government should pay out so much for a masterpiece like this. With the economy getting slowly worse there are more pressing concerns.

The present Culture minister Andy Burnham has allegedly asked the treasury for between £10 and £20 million. With the rest of the money coming from the Heritage fund.

I think that this should be left to the open market.

  Blessed with some of the UK’s most beautiful scenery, the county of Powys stretches from the Brecons in the south to the borders of Snowdonia in the north.  According to the study from the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, its inhabitants are happier than all other Britons.

Happiness and well-being is mapped in 273 districts in England, Scotland and Wales using the authoritative British Household Panel Survey.

Cleethorpes Resort manager Robert Chalmers was delighted with the result - but not at all surprised.

He said: “It is fantastic for the resort and North East Lincolnshire Council and it demonstrates how well we are developing the area.

“The resort is taking care of people who are making the most of the weather and the places to visit.

“Everything is in place for the resort to continue to be a happy place.

“All different departments in the council are working with local businesses to keep the resort busy and everybody happy.

“We are making Cleethorpes a happy place to visit and live in.”

You may be interested to know that N E Lincolnshire was rated the 11th happiest place in the UK, ahead of Hull in 156th place, Scunthorpe 225th, Sheffield 241st, and Doncaster 271st.

The full list is on http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1050157/Britains-happiest-places-list.html

CLEAN up your own mess – or pay up.

That is the stark warning going out to vandals from council chiefs today.  Anybody caught daubing graffiti on buildings in North East Lincolnshire now has the option to clean it off themselves, rather than pay a fine. 

Although the on-the-spot fines currently stand at £50, if the case ends up in court, the figure can rise into thousands of pounds, and can even lead to a prison term in the most extreme cases. 

Together with a £10,000 bill to clean up the offending artwork, the council spends nearly £30,000 on a graffiti clearance task force per year, and the total bill for ridding the borough of unsightly scribblings can be as high as £50,000 annually.  The money collected from the fines will go towards this total, in particular the chemicals to clean it off. 

The money collected from the fines will go towards this total, in particular the chemicals to clean it off, which are costly.

Councillor Steve Beasant, portfolio holder for communities and neighbourhoods, said: “I am pleased that the people who seem intent on making a mess on our streets are the ones being told to clean it up. “Hopefully this will act as a deterrent to other like-minded vandals – we are watching and we will take strong action to rid the community of unsightly daubs and scribbles.”    

The Leader of the Council, Councillor Andrew De Freitas, said: “Graffiti blights our communities and is an example of anti-social behaviour at its worst.

“I am fully in support of this action by the neighbourhood community wardens, and hope it teaches the perpetrators a valuable lesson about respecting property that belongs to others.”

Tthree 14-year-old girls from Grimsby’s Nunsthorpe estate – were caught out, and opted to clean up their act.They spent yesterday scrubbing their scribblings off walls around Grimsby as punishment. The young people concerned cannot be identified for legal reasons, but one told the Grimsby Evening Telegraph, and said: “It’s something to do because there’s nothing to do around here. I don’t think I’ll do it again though, it does look scruffy.

  The Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) claims that the amount of tax paid on flights, fuels and cars is far more than that needed just to offset the cost of the country’s carbon emissions.

Every family in Britain is paying nearly £800 a year in a ‘dishonest’ green tax grab, a shocking report said last night.

Hard-pressed households are forking out the staggering sum on flights, fuel and for their cars even though it is ‘unnecessary’, said low tax campaigners.

‘With the credit crunch squeezing household budgets, people can ill afford this extra tax grab. It’s dishonest and unjust for politicians to wrap revenue raising tax hikes in a green banner.

‘The Government are talking about raising taxes even further, but our conclusions show that green taxes should be kept as they are or cut.’

The total cost of green taxes and charges was £24.2bn in 2007/08 – even though the social cost of the UK’s entire output of greenhouse gases was  only £4.6bn, according to estimates made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This suggested households in Britain were being forced to pay £19.6billion a year too much in levies on airline tickets, petrol and to run their cars. This works out at £783 per family.

Even taking the Government’s estimate that the cost of greenhouse gas emissions was £16.3billion last year would mean green taxes were still £7.9billion – or £315 per household – too high, said the TPA.

Matthew Sinclair, TPA policy analyst, said: “Green taxes are set far higher than is necessary to pay for our carbon footprint, which loads an unfair burden onto hard pressed British families and businesses.

“With the credit crunch squeezing household budgets, people can ill afford this extra tax grab. It’s dishonest and unjust for politicians to wrap revenue raising tax hikes in a green banner.

“The Government are talking about raising taxes even further, but our conclusions show that green taxes should be kept as they are or cut.”

Households and industry are charged green taxes in the form of fuel duty, vehicle excise duty, landfill tax, the Climate Change Levy and the Renewables Obligation.

The eco-tax burden also varies significantly between suburban areas and urban districts, the TPA said.

A TPA spokesman said: “Excessive green taxes hit poorer people hardest, hurt the competitiveness of British firms, cause Britain to export emissions and fall disproportionately on residents of rural and suburban areas.”

However, Dave Timms, Friends of the Earth’s economics campaigner  “The Government has fuelled public scepticism by failing to use tax breaks and public spending to make it cheaper and easier to go green. If green taxes are to work the Government must also invest in greener alternatives such as public transport.”

A Treasury spokesman said: “The estimate of green taxes is wrong as it includes taxes used to fund core public services, rather than simply offsetting the cost of CO2.

“For example, while fuel duty recognises the environmental costs of driving, it also pays for important public services, including new roads and public transport and efforts to tackle child poverty

A target to reduce health inequalities by 10 per cent by 2010 is unlikely to be reached, senior officials at the Department of Health were told.

Figures show that the gap has actually widened over the last 10 years.

Health inequalities are measured by the difference in infant mortality and life expectancy between the poorest members of society and the average of the whole population.

The gap in infant mortality rates between the poorest and the national average was 13 per cent in 1997/9, which was used as the baseline years, but the gap is now 17% according to the Department of Health.

The difference in the life expectancy of men in the poorest areas of the country and the national average is now two per cent greater than it was in 1995/7, and the difference for women has also increased and is 11 per cent greater than it was a decade ago.

The Shadow Health Secretary, said: “Labour are failing the poorest in society. The gap between rich and poor on key indicators like life expectancy is as wide as it has been since Victorian times.

“Labour have neglected our public health infrastructure and despite increasing NHS resources the amount spent in the worst affected areas is no greater than the amount spent in the most affluent areas.”

Infants born into families in routine or manual employment, had a mortality rate of 5.6 per 1,000 live births in the two years between 2004 and 2006 but in the same period in the population as a whole there were just 4.8 deaths per 1,000 live births. The difference is now 17 per cent, compared to just 13 per cent in 1997/99.

Life expectancy has improved across all social groups but more slowly in poorer areas.

For men in the 70 most deprived local authority areas, life expectancy in 2004/6 was 75.3 years, compared with the average across the whole country which was two years longer.

Similarly for women in the poorest areas life expectancy was given as 80 years in 2004/6 and the average across the whole country was 19 months longer.

The Department of Health board has been warned in a report  which waspresented last week that there was a ‘risk of non-delivery of a key public service agreement target by 2010, to reduce health inequalities by 10%’.

  The day after the personal details of a million bank customers was found on a computer sold on e bay, personal details of council tax payers have turned up on another computer also sold on eBay! 

Thousands of bank account numbers, sort codes, names and addresses were stored on the hard drive which had previously been owned by a borough council.

Further personal details were found including conversations about householders’ divorces and family bereavements. The computer was sold on eBay to a Scottish computer expert for just £6.99.

Officials at Charnwood Borough Council in Leicestershire promised to investigate the apparent data breach urgently.  Computer experts said the two eBay sales were the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of the secondhand computer market. They warned that thousands of used computers were sold every year without data being properly deleted.

The latest discovery was made by the Scot who bought the hard drive to practise his technical skills.  He received it in the mail on August 15 and – using data recovery equipment easily obtainable on the internet – discovered 35,000 files. They included council tax bills, photographs of council staff and internal memos. 

The Edinburgh-based 36-year-old, who asked not to be named, said he had tried to contact Charnwood’s security officer but had no response.

‘I can see from these documents who is having financial problems, and who is getting bailiffs sent round to their house,’ he said. 

‘ There is even information about a death on there.  I was stunned to find 35,000 items – documents, photos and, memos.

‘There is a lot of stuff many people would find interesting, like bank account numbers and sort codes from payments made over the phone.

‘These organisations should know better and know how to handle the disposal of people’s personal information.’

Data on the hard drive dates from 2002 to July 2008.

In one telephone transcript, a council employee notes that a female taxpayer, whose name and address is given, receives just £70 a week from her job in a pub, is separated from her husband and has ‘no goods worth chasing’.

One resident of Syston in Leicestershire, whose name, address and phone number were listed in a file on the hard drive, said she was horrified by the discovery.

The Information Commissioner’s Office has pledged to investigate.

  DO you have a burning question to ask?   Then now is your chance to speak up!

North East Lincolnshire is holding its very own Question Time event – putting key local people under the public spotlight for an evening of discussion and debate.

As part of North East Lincolnshire Council’s Community Engagement Week, the North East Lincolnshire Council Question Time panel will be inviting questions and debate at a live event at Whitgift Theatre, Grimsby, on Monday, September 15.

On the panel will be: the Leader of the Council, Councillor Andrew De Freitas; the Deputy Leader Councillor Keith Brookes; Great Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell; divisional commander of Humberside Police, Dave Hilditch; North East Lincolnshire Council’s new chief executive, Tony Hunter; chair of the North East Lincolnshire NHS Care Trust Plus, Val Waterhouse; plus the North East Lincolnshire representative on the national Youth Parliament and her deputy.

Chairing the panel on the night will be Mark Webb, chairman of the Local Strategic Partnership and managing director of the Cleethorpes Chronicle.

The event, beginning at 6pm, will include a finger buffet prior to the debates, and crèche facilities can be arranged with advance notice.

Tickets for the event are free but must be booked in advance. If you would like to join the audience, please contact Paul Windley on 01472 324121 or Paul Wisken on 01472 324124. Alternatively you can email paul.windley@nelincs.gov.uk or paul.wisken@nelincs.gov.uk. Or you can write to: NELC Question Time tickets, Law and Democratic Services, Municipal Offices, Grimsby, N E Lincs, DN31 1HU. The closing date for ticket applications is Wednesday, September 3

Audience members who would like to ask a question of the panel on the night are asked to submit their questions beforehand. You can either do this when applying for your ticket, or you can submit your questions separately, sending them to the above contact details with your name and ticket number. The deadline for question submissions is Wednesday, September 10.

According to an article in today’s Daily Mail, more than 3,200 laptops and mobile phones containing sensitive information have been lost or stolen from Government departments, it was revealed on Monday.

An astonishing 468 devices a year  -  more than one every day  -  have vanished since 2001.

The revelation cast grave doubts on Labour’s claims that it can be trusted with confidential data as it seeks to introduce ID cards.
Critics said it proves ministers behave ‘recklessly’ with the public’s personal details, and called for a massive shake-up in the way electronic data is protected.

Experts warned that terrorists plotting a catastrophic attack, as well as fraudsters and blackmailers, could wreak havoc by using details stored on the computers to steal identities.

The statistics were released in a series of written Parliamentary answers to MPs increasingly worried about the handling of data by Whitehall officials following a series of high-profile bungles.

Only last week, a computer memory stick containing the personal details of 127,000 prisoners and high-risk offenders, including rapists and murderers, was lost by an employee of a private contractor working for the Home Office. Last November, two computer discs holding information  -  including bank details and National Insurance numbers  -  of 25million child benefit claimants got lost in the post.

The new figures reveal that at least 3,278 items have vanished from Government departments, including 2,168 laptops, 947 mobile phones and 163 ‘personal digital assistant’ (PDA) palmtop computers, such as Blackberrys.

The worst offender was the Ministry of Defence  -  which lost 994 laptops, eight mobile phones and 12 PDAs. Defence chiefs refused to say what was on the devices, but confirmed that some of the information was classified as ‘secret’ or ‘restricted’.

The Department for Work and Pensions, responsible for overseeing benefits, had 271 laptops, 128 mobile phones and 20 PDAs vanish. 

The other main culprits included the Ministry of Justice, from which 169 laptops, 172 mobile phones and one PDA disappeared, and the Department of Health, which reported that 315 devices had gone missing.

The Department for Work and Pensions had 271 laptops, 128 mobile phones and 20 PDAs vanish

Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather, who uncovered the statistics, said: ‘The Labour government has a disgraceful history of recklessness with personal data, showing a complete disrespect for our privacy.

‘Many Whitehall departments hold huge amounts of sensitive information on individuals, and they have a responsibility to keep it safe. If these missing laptops contained private or personal details, then the Government urgently needs to own up.

‘Year after year, the taxpayer is footing the bill for this Government’s shocking carelessness.

‘It is time we had a complete rethink on the way electronic data is protected.  

The Ministry of Defence has lost 994 laptops alone

‘How can they expect us to trust them to keep our personal information safe in their unnecessary and expensive ID card scheme?’

Simon Davies, director of the human rights group Privacy International, said criminals would need only three pieces of information about a person to launch a ‘massive attack’ on their identity.

He added: ‘This demonstrates the woeful state of Government security.

‘The implications of these laptops and mobile phones going missing is absolutely enormous.

‘Ministers are playing Russian roulette with people’s lives because they are refusing to take measures to improve the safety of information kept by Whitehall departments.

‘If a criminal gets hold of some of this information, the sky is the limit for them.

‘They will steal identities and destroy lives. We are overdue a cataclysmic criminal attack on identity and ministers are not heeding the warnings.’

Following the recent data scandals, Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell launched a sweeping review of procedures within departments and agencies for the storage and the use of data.

In January, he issued a blanket ban on Whitehall staff taking unencrypted laptops containing personal details from their offices.

  The Liberal Democrats have for a long time called for a windfall tax, and on Sunday, a YouGov poll for The Observer newspaper of just over 2,000 people found that 67% now support a windfall tax.  Nick Clegg said recently:  “When the winter comes, price rises will hit the elderly and the vulnerable hardest. The Government cannot sit idly by and allow them to suffer.  “Ministers should be clawing back the money from the energy companies’ £9bn European windfall to help protect struggling households from the effects of fuel poverty.   “This huge amount of unearned income should be used to insulate homes and make sure that households are paying less for their energy bills.   “Energy companies have a responsibility to protect their most vulnerable customers, and ministers must ensure that they deliver on this.” Pressure group Compass, which organised the petition, said it expected more MPs to sign after the summer recess, however, on Sunday, a YouGov poll for The Observer newspaper found that 67% supported a windfall tax, the government says it is “looking at” all options to help problems of families being able to pay their fuel bills this winter.  

According to the Daily Telegraph (not a paper I normally read), the Homes Office have lost 43 laptops and 94 mobiles in three years. This news comes days after the department lost a memory stick containing the details of all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales.

It has emerged that officials lost more than 300,000 people’s details a month in the year to April.

This follows an endless catastrophe of lost data. Yes, remember the loss of two CDs containing the entire child benefit database, containing the details of 25 million families, last November, and we were promised everything would be tightened up.  These discs have still not been found.

Home Office data released in response to a question by the Tory peer Lord Hanningfield show that 43 laptops and 94 mobile phones have been lost or stolen at the department over the past three years – 15 laptops and 47 mobiles in 2007; 14 laptops and 10 mobiles in 2006; and 14 laptops and 37 mobiles in 2005.

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Defence said that almost 600 laptop computers had been stolen in the past decade.

That admission came after Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, had to make a statement to the Commons about the theft of a laptop containing the personal details of 600,000 people from a car in Birmingham.

A Home Office spokesman refused to say what was on the 43 laptops, but added: “We do not believe that any of the lost laptops contained sensitive or classified information.” If they are unsure what information the laptops contained, then what really is going on in the Home Office; it’s about time someone is held to account.

Apparently they are determined to learn from earlier security breaches in government and they committed to ensuring that our systems and processes to protect personal data are as good as they can be. Haven’t we heard all this before?

Since the loss of details for 25 million child benefit claimants in November, Whitehall departments have begun including information on personal data losses in their annual financial statements.

  Commenting, Sarah Teather said:“It seems that this Government simply cannot be trusted with keeping sensitive information safe. It is frightening to think that secret MoD information can be lost or stolen.“This shows a shocking degree of incompetence across the entire Government.“When different departments are losing sensitive data left, right and centre it is no wonder that people have lost confidence in Gordon Brown and Labour.“How can they expect us to trust them to keep our personal information safe in their unnecessary and expensive ID card scheme?”