Mwahahahaha. Milliband’s Wiki Got Hacked.
I heard this on the radio yesterday and laughed like a drain. The Register has the whole amusing story:
An attempt by a UK cabinet minister to discuss proposed environment policy using a wiki has ended in embarrassment after pranksters made merry at the expense of the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra).
Tech-savvy environment secretary David Milliband was left with egg on his face after his department’s draft “Environment Contract” wiki was edited to include spurious entries poking fun at the initiative.
Hours after publication of the policy, pranksters launched dozens of attacks against the wiki, hosted on Defra’s official website. The heading for discussion “Who are the parties to the environmental contract?” became, “Where is the party for the environmental contract? Can I come? Will there be cake? Hooray!”
Responses to the question of “what tools can be used to deliver the environmental contract?” solicited the illuminating answer: “Spade, Organic Yoghurt Stirrer, Old washing up liquid bottle, Sticky Back Plastic.”
Hackers suggested the correct tools to “create the right incentive frameworks” included a “Big stick” and an “Owl magnet”.
[…]
Have I said how much I loathe the oleaginous David Milliband, the Tory Boy of New Labour? Why, I think I may well have. A quick reprise:
Milliband is yet another member of yet another of those middle-class legacy Labour families like the Hobsbawms, Toynbees, Benns and so many others, local and national, who think that because their forebears were socialist pioneers it confers upon them the right to rule in perpetuity. Milliband’s never had a real job:
Former Head of the No 10 Policy Unit. He is a former Labour Party policy director (before 1997 election), Secretary of the Social Justice Commission and member of the IPPR. Brother of Ed Milliband, Special Adviser to Gordon Brown at the Treasury. He was paid ?70,000 in 2000. He went to Oxford University and MIT. While he was at No.10, no Government Green or White Paper was published until he cleared it.
Miliband and his peers in New Labour are not averse to using their own old-boys’ and girls’ networks to get ahead and they exude the same sense of personal and political entitlement ( though cloaked in a more touchy-feely disguise) as many of those inside-the-beltway, think-tank-employed, wingnut welfare recipents, who know no life outside that of party hacks, lobbyists and the continued jockeying for power and privilege.
“Tech-savvy?” Tech-bloody-savvy? He went to MIT and he spent 40,000 quid of our money setting up a blog when he could’ve done it for free? What the hell did he learn there? We’ve got a 3-legged cat that’s more tech-savvy than that.
What a twat Milliband is. His wiki mess is par for the course in government-funded but private-sector led IT projects though – the government has just had to drop yet another reworking of the benefits payment systems due to incompetence, at a cost of well over a million pounds.
Milliband is also the only one visibly sticking up for Blair in the media as 70 17 Labour MP’s are publically calling for his resignation (sorry, got a little optimistic and misheard), which tells you all you’ll ever need to know about the wunderkind ‘s judgement.
Read more: UK Government, UK Politics, New Labour, IT, DEFRA, NHS, David Milliband, Blogging, Wikis, Hackers
