And the figures to back
that up?
Labour 2,101 council
seats, up 338.
Ukip 163 seats. That's
fewer than half the number Labour added to a total that was already
more than 10 times what Ukip now has.
Labour now runs twice
as many councils as the Tories. Ukip still runs the same number it
did before. None.
Funny triumph. Strange
disaster.
The real story, though
– the real political firebomb – was still lurking, to be revealed
only on Sunday night.
Now Ukip really can
claim a historic triumph. First national election for 100 years to be
won by neither Conservatives nor Labour; first to be won by a party
with no Westminster MPs.
Except that this wasn't
a national election. It was a European election.
And that's the crucial
point.
Such success as Ukip
did achieve in the council vote can be put down to the fact that the
poll took place at the same time as the European one.
Most of its votes were
votes AGAINST Europe, not FOR a fully privatised health service,
fewer rights for working people and more tax breaks for the rich.
Perhaps ironically, it
is part of a Europe-wide tide of disaffection with the Union.
The tide that saw the
ultra right-wing Front National top the poll in France, while
left-wing anti-austerity groups won in Greece and Spain.
Whatever Nigel Farage
may claim, the fox isn't in the Westminster henhouse.
He's in no position to
affect egg-production, or anything much else, in city or county hall.
But he may be about to
wreak havoc among the chickens of Strasbourg and Brussels.
****
I'm getting to like
that Chris Packham more and more.
The TV naturalist –
now settled in for a three-week Springwatch stint at Minsmere – has
a fine habit of speaking unpopular truths.
He delivered several in
an excellent interview in last week's Radio Times.
His big point – one
which needs saying loudly and often – was about the thing nearly
all politicians seem to consider their most important goal. Economic
growth.
“If there's one
mantra that we need to break,” Packham said, “it's that economic
growth is a good thing.
“It isn't. It's a
recipe for global disaster.”
Just so.
****
Changed your password
lately? You really should, you know.
What do you mean, which
password?
We live in an
increasingly password-protected world, and I sometimes wonder just
how secure it all is.
Never mind remembering
my passwords, I can't even work out exactly how many I've got.
As a freelance working
regularly for three different employers, I have about a dozen
directly work-related ones.
Then there are the ones
for banking and online payments. If you include PINs and “memorable
names” etc, that's at least another dozen.
And then there's social
media, my library login, those for updating the three websites I run,
and three email accounts.
Thank goodness for
those “Forgotten password?” links.
There's a lot of
helpful advice around about password security.
They should be at least
six (or eight, or nine) characters long. They shouldn't be your name,
your middle name, your mum's name or your pet's name. They shouldn't
be any word found in a dictionary. They certainly shouldn't be
“password” or “123456789” or “98786754321”. They should
include capitals and lower-case letters, numerals and other symbols.
You shouldn't use the
same one for your email, your bank account or your workstation as you
use for anything else.
And you should change
them regularly.
All sound advice. And
yet.
When ebay announced
last week that all its users' passwords had been hacked, I promptly
did what we were all recommended to do. I set out to change mine.
And the first thing I
discovered was that I couldn't remember what it was.
No problem. Hit
“Forgotten password?”, key in your email address and a link to
set a new password will be emailed to you.
Bearing in mind all of
the above, this is a process I go through a lot.
But it does make
alarmingly clear that however many walls you barricade yourself
behind, there's always just one little doorway in.
In this case, it's the
single password that gives access to your email account.
Let that get into the
wrong hands and almost everything else about you – all you own, all
you are – potentially goes too.
Scary.
And there's another
thing about that ebay hacking.
If a database
containing email and physical addresses, phone numbers, birthdates –
and passwords – of 128 million users was hacked “between late
February and early March” how come we didn't hear about it until
late May?
And how come, when we
finally did hear, it was on the news, not from ebay itself?
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