Astonishingly, in Britain every child in the land is entitled to Child Benefit, a regular payment from the Government (read taxpayer), whether the family needs the money or not. This faux largesse means that around 70 percent of the population receives some sort of benefit from the political system.

Add to that astounding fact the dismal truth that the present administration couldn’t assemble a flat-pack whelk stall without it falling down, and you have a recipe for big trouble, especially when it insists on putting all data into massive computer databases.

Recap : a £20billion ($42bn) nationwide computer records system for the National Health Service is still not operational after years of tinkering. Experts say it will never work. Similar projects for agriculture, passports and other ministries have met with the same fate at vast cost to the taxpayer.

Bombshell : yesterday we were told that the personal data of nearly half the nation has “gone missing”. In the newly merged department of Inland Revenue and Customs, a “junior official” downloaded the personal details, including bank account data and National Insurance numbers, of 25 million people and placed all of it on two unencrypted CDs.

The next step almost beggars belief if it hadn’t happened on the current Government’s watch. The official then put the CDs in an envelope and posted it. The package wasn’t even registered so couldn’t be tracked or traced. Naturally, it’s now “lost in the post” or I wouldn’t be telling this tale of woe.

Alternatively, it may have been stolen to order by organized crime. We have been told the official concerned is now under guard in a “safe house” to protect him or her against the media — and presumably criminals seeking “to make him an offer he can’t refuse”.

Outcome : this morning there’s huge panic all over the UK as people wake to find their bank accounts and personal identities compromised in the most dangerous way possible.

Once again we see the perils of allowing a central administration to accumulate vast quantities of information through a system of universal benefits more in tune with the Soviet era than the distributed nature of data in the age of the internet.

People who advocate such policies should never again be entrusted with a modern nation’s cash and data.

But don’t hold your breath. No politician has resigned — only a hapless civil servant.

Plus ca change …