Beginning with a bit of fake history . .

It may of course just be a typo, but I was amused to read an article by Peter Mandelson in the latest issue of the RSA Journal where he claims his grandfather Herbert Morrison served as 'acting Prime Minister in the post-war Labour government.' In which case no wonder poor old Clem Attlee, the actual Prime Minister, disliked him so much. What it must be like to have a deputy who jealously covets your position. Nothing much seems to have changed there, and perhaps as and when Jeremy Corbyn becomes PM he would be well advised to discard the non-constitutional deputy PM position. His current Labour Party deputy leader, the ever plotting Tom Watson could only be relied upon to intensify his ambitions. The words 'barge pole' and 'trust' come to mind.

According to Wikipedia, Morrison opposed the nationalisation of health services. It seems he can't be given too much credit then for Labour's greatest achievement. We won't hear so much about that from the grandson, who is Chairman and co-founder of Global Counsel, which helps corporates and policy-makers behave properly in our capitalist nirvana. There's some useful analysis on their website for those who may be interested in taking up Trump's generous offer to buy chunks of the NHS in future trade deals with the UK.

I notice from the list of Mandy's positions on their website that he is also a member of the 'International Advisory Committee' of BlueVoyant, a cyber security company. BlueVoyant claims "The leadership talent that guides BlueVoyant comes from the top cybersecurity organizations in the world, including the FBI, NSA, Unit 8200, GCHQ and the c-suite of major Fortune 500 companies are spread across the globe. Expert monitoring, detection, response and remediation is delivered by seasoned analysts from our Security Operations Centers (SOCs) in the US and Israel."

I must confess to not having known about Unit 8200 before - even though it has a very useful mention in Wikipedia, and is apparently the largest unit in the Israeli Defence Force. It gets up to all sorts of cyber tricks, and is said to have been the source of the Stuxnet virus which brought a halt to Iran's uranium enrichment, and also damaged many other industrial systems globally. You see, that's where you need the services of highly-connected BlueVoyant - whose sales pitch could be 'we know who smashes your windows so we can fix them faster.'

Cyber 'security' means different things to different people, but these days when anyone talks about security and the internet and /or personal information, it's time to reach for the sick bag. Or perhaps not, as Mandy concludes his article (which fears the exclusion of a post-Brexit UK from e.g. GPS systems so useful for weapons targeting) "there is a duty not to destroy completely what has been such a good and useful relationship, at so many levels." I know what you mean, Peter.  (emphasis added)