Alistair Darling must explain his "lost data fiasco" statement discrepancies.

If you have read the news headlines this morning, you will have soon realised that this is going to be a VERY bad day for Gordon Brown and his cabinet. George Osborne wants to see Darling get up in parliament to explain the discrepancies between in his statement made last week and what we now know to be the truth. Was a junior HMRC desk jockey to blame for the CDs going walkabout, or is it as George Osborne says, that there are documents which suggest that senior officials were well aware of what happened? I know what my money would be on.

Also the time line for all this is a bit confusing to say the least. The CDs were posted on the 18th of October (with or without management approval?). On the 3rd of November, HMRC senior management are told the CDs are lost in the post. Now, here is where it gets a little puzzling, why did it take them until the 10th (eight days later) to inform Darling and hence the PM? And why did it take until the 14th of November (a further 5 days) for the government to call in the Met? The excuse given by Darling for this delay in calling in the police was that the HMRC were looking for the lost discs. I'm sorry but that does not wash. The HMRC had already been looking for the discs for eight days when Darling was given the bad news, it is quite obvious that HMRC management had failed to find the discs and were asking for help (or owning up). The police should have been called in immediately, and the only reason they were not, was to keep the loss quiet in the hope that the discs would be found.

The thing that is most alarming about this whole sorry affair, is the fact that we the public were not informed that our personal details were at large, until the government had known for a full 11 days. Now let me think - what was happening in British politics around about the time that Darling and Brown found out about the missing discs? Oh yes, Jacqui Smith was stood at the dispatch box to explain away what looked like a cover-up of the fact that she knew in July that up to 5,000 illegal immigrants had been cleared to work in the security industry. Could that be the reason why Gordon Brown decided to keep us in the dark (and our money at risk) for 11 days?

Prime Ministers Questions, lost personal data fiasco.

David Cameron has just had a damn good attempt at getting Gordon Brown to accept responsibility for the lost personal data fiasco. Gordon did not do the Honourable thing, instead he thought it would be a good idea to blame the opposition. David very rightly called this attempt to deflect the blame "pathetic".

How far away are we from a vote of no confidence? This Labour government since Brown took over, has presided over one massive fiasco after another. We must be the laughing stock of the developed world.

PMQs should now be shown on the evening news, the people need to know what kind of shower are supposedly governing this country.

Tony Blair must be splitting his sides.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Alistair Darling, where are my bank details?

I could not believe what I was listening to at 15:30 today. How the hell did 25m sets of personal details get lost in the post? My details are contained on one of the two missing discs, my bank account number, sort code, name, address, date of birth and National Insurance number. In fact everything that a crook could want. Why was this not brought to public attention sooner? Darling has made his excuses, but could it have something to do with him not wanting to announce such an almighty balls-up at the same time Jacqui Smith was informing the country that our security companies are overrun with illegal immigrants? Did they try to cover this up, just as they covered up the security fiasco?

Darling said there was no evidence the data had fallen into criminal hands, which also means there is no evidence to show that it hasn't - Muppet. He's telling us there is nothing to worry about, but, and it's a big but, we should monitor our bank accounts. I sit here now, not knowing whether some Herbert is raiding my bank account or ordering a credit card in my name. I don't know how he has the gall to blame junior officials at HMRC, who he said had ignored security procedures. I'll tell you who is to blame, one Alistair Maclean Darling. He admitted during his emergency statement that two other major security breaches had occurred recently. So in my opinion it is far too late to be calling for an independent review of the incident by Kieran Poynter of PricewaterhouseCoopers. After two major security breaches a review of security at the HMRC should have been carried out before this calamity had the chance to happen.

George Osborne took the government to task: "Let us be clear about the scale of this catastrophic mistake - the names, the addresses and the dates of birth of every child in the country are sitting on two computer discs that are apparently lost in the post, and the bank account details and National Insurance numbers of 10 million parents, guardians and carers have gone missing. He said that this was the: "final blow for the ambitions of this government to create a national ID database" as "they simply can not be trusted with people's personal information". George was quite clearly spot on with his evaluation.

The prime minister's official spokeswoman said Gordon Brown has "full confidence" in Mr Darling (That's Darling and Jacqui Smith within one week). She added that Mr Darling has not offered to resign - Why?