Precious parcels

So they've managed to lose the details of 25 million child benefit claims in the postal system. The big questions now seem to be should we change our bank accounts, or just the passwords? Should Alistair Darling go or is the resignation of Paul Gray sufficient?

But the big question in my mind is what about our children? Somewhere out there are all of their details - their names, their dates of birth, addresses and National Insurance numbers. My children are far more precious to me than the non-existent contents of my bank account, and the thought of anybody other than doctors, their school and my family having those details feels more invasive than the possible threat of bank account details being at large.

But talking of precious packages, I must tell you the priceless thing one of my precious little parcels came out with the other day. Bill was driving them back from ballet one morning. Lily had won the Ballet Bear for trying extra hard at the box splits, and he was squashed in between her and Poppy on the back seat.

Stuck in the perpetual roadworks that seem to be dotted around our town at the moment, Lily stared vacantly out of the window and fiddled with Ballet Bear's paw:
'Daddy?' she started...
'Yes?'
'What's a fraggle?'
'A fraggle?' Bill's mind working overtime as he tried to make sense of this latest in a never ending list of bizarre questions that emanate from our two.
'Yes. A fraggle.'
'Well, it's sort of like a muppet.'
'A muppet? What's a muppet?'
'Well a kind of puppet.'
'So a fraggle is like a muppet which is a sort of puppet?'
'That's right.'

Pause.

Why's it called a fraggle?'
'Well, it was a TV show in the 'eighties. It was based on the muppets and they were called fraggles.'
'Oh.'

Silence for a little while as Bill inched his way forwards in the traffic and remembered fondly the days of Fraggle Rock when children's popular culture seemed somehow more innocent.

'Why do you ask?'
'Well, whatever they are, there's one on the side of that lorry. Look - F-R-A-G-I-L-E. Fraggle.'

Even Ballet Bear looked confused...

Perhaps the muppets at HM Revenue and Customs could do with going back to basics and asking someone what 'data protection' means, and why it is an important part of our contemporary information-driven culture. It's just a thought...