Blow your nose and get stopped by the Police!

The BBC news website is reporting a story of an Ayershire Businessman who was apparently sitting in his stationary car with the handbrake on and was fined for blowing his nose. He was stopped by no less than 4 policeman and given a £60 fixed penalty fine for not being in control of his vehicle. Needless to say he's taking this to court and will plead not guilty. Let's hope sanity applies here and the Police jobsworths are laughed out of court.

UPDATE: Common sense has prevailed. Looks like the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has decided that no further action is required and the case has been dropped. The BBC has a full report about this case. But how much time and money has gone into resolving this? Perhaps it should be docked from the charging Policeman's pay...

DVLA sells your private data

Apparently private data is being sold by the DVLA according to this article by the register and the Daily Mail.  It has been reported that in the past 5 years 18 million names and addresses have been sold by this UK government agency to companies such as parking firms an private clamping companies.  So much for privacy of your data.  Apparently the data is not sold to dodgy establishments. Hrmm.

Well, apart from that fact that in 2009 the DVLA data was acquired by Castrol via an intermediary and used for some creative marketing according to the the register. Castrol used number plate recognition and data about the owner's car make and model from the DVLA was flashed up on digital billboards.  The data was not provided directly by the DVLA and the DVLA stated such use was inappropriate.  I'd say it's more than inappropriate - it's absolutely scandalous.

Nice to know that the UK government is happy so share the data of it's citizens - any chance of opting out of this scheme Gordon Brown?  Goodness knows how secure my Government owned medical records are...