10 years at No.10 for loyal Larry
BRITAIN’S chief mouser Larry the cat is celebrating a decade of prowling the corridors of political power at Number 10.
Tomorrow marks 10 years since Larry left Battersea rescue centre for a new home with the Prime Minister.
With an official title of Chief Mouser to The Cabinet Office, Larry took over when rats were often seen scuttling about Downing Street, which had no feline pest controller since Humphrey’s retirement in 1997.
He has gone on to serve three PMS, beginning with David Cameron, and met world leaders, causing a security scare when he went for an afternoon nap under President Donald Trump’s armoured limousine in 2019.
A Number 10 spokesman said: “A much-beloved member of the No.10 team, Larry plays a vital role as Chief Mouser and in delighting staff and the public alike with his playful antics.”
INVESTIGATIONS using the Police National Computer will be hindered for at least three months while the Home Office tries to recover thousands of lost records.
Policing Minister Kit Malthouse has admitted that the full records of more than 15,000 people were accidentally lost during a purge of data from the system last month.
He revealed in a written statement to Parliament that details of 209,550 offences relating to 112,697 people had been wiped while operators were trying to delete data that was supposed to be removed.
This included the entire police records of 15,089 people.
Fingerprint, DNA and records have been affected.
But Mr Malthouse stressed that fewer than 200 fingerprint records were lost, with no figure put on the number of missing DNA files.
The Government is hopeful that none of the records will be permanently lost and can be retrieved from other systems, including
arrest the separate National DNA Database, he said.
But the recovery is expected to take at least 12 weeks, leaving police forces and other law enforcement agencies unable to access missing data in the meantime.
He said: “While the data is incomplete, there is the possibility that law enforcement partners will not have access to records and information that could help progress their inquiries and investigations.
“We have also confirmed that no records of convictions have been deleted. Our analysis shows that 99.5 per cent of the deleted records were created prior to 2011.
“Technicians are also confident that all the data which has been deleted can be restored.”
The Police National Computer is held and managed by the Home Office. It is understood that data on certain individuals was being removed in accordance with Britain’s withdrawal from the EU on January 1.
However, a “coding error” is said to have led to the wrong records also being deleted on January 10. Former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Hogan-howe will now investigate exactly what went wrong, with his report expected next month.
Labour has branded the blunder a “disastrous security breach” and has asked for assurances that data on suspected terrorists has not been lost.
Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-symonds said: “Even in the best-case scenario, there will be three months during which criminals could walk free due to a dangerous lack of police records.”
He has written to Home Secretary Priti Patel asking a series of further questions about the data loss.
He said he wants to know if local police forces have been informed of the potential impact on their ongoing investigations.
He said: “Have conversations been held with policing to assess whether operations or investigations have been undermined, including on counter-terrorism?
“Public safety has been put at risk yet again by unacceptable incompetence.”
MIDWIVES at the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Nhstrust have been told to say “chestfeeding” instead of “breastfeeding”.
Thetrust is the first in the country to bring in a “gender inclusive language policy” for its maternity services department. Except that the word “maternity” is now also verboten with its unfortunate womanly associations. Thetrust instead offers “perinatal services” which could give you a moment’s unwelcome confusion if you were several centimetres dilated and in a hurry to find the labour ward.
And how long before the word “midwife” gets nixed? It means “with-woman” in Old English (ie the person who stays with the woman giving birth) so it’ll have to go.
Anyway what’s wrong with the word “breast”? People of all genders and none have breasts. Everyone can wear doublebreasted suits, have breast pockets and “make a clean breast of things”. Everyone can swim breaststroke and everyone has a breastbone. Everyone can also get breast cancer.
And surely the milk (now to be called
“human milk” not “breast milk”) comes via milk ducts which are necessarily part of “a breast”.to say “chest milk” is unnecessarily vague, as though it miraculously squirts out at random anywhere from the neck down.
Come to think of it, in my lactating days, I used to freeze surplus breast milk in sterile plastic bags and store it in the old chest freezer. Now that’s chest milk.