It occurs to me that I've been talking a lot on this blog about data going missing here in the UK. I've given our Government and various people a hard time - if they cared what I said it'd hurt. I've said these things are managerial rather than technical.

And I've had a nagging feeling that it might, just might, not be completely fair to blame the UK and just about nobody else. As a UK resident clearly I get the UK stories rather than the others.

Until now. I'm happy to be able to confirm that the White House has lost a whole load of e-mails dating back years. And a judge has ordered the staff to find them.

Oddly it doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that there were probably standing orders not to lose them in the first place, and that didn't do any good. We'll see if they turn up. My bet is that they're down the back of an armchair, with all the loose change...

Bye bye Bush. We're now about to enter the age of the first Blackberry-addicted President*, from what I can ascertain, and he wants to keep it - we'll see how that goes down with the security people.

* Yes I know that's not his only 'first' but personally I think the sooner we stop obsessing about his skin colour and take it as read and respected, the better