Londoner's Diary: The mandarins finally get into bed with Google

 
Testing times: departing Francis Maude (Picture: Nigel Howard)
4 February 2015

Has the Government finally had a technological breakthrough? After years of launching vast, unwieldy new IT systems — only to see most of them malfunction or get scrapped — the wizards at Whitehall have decided to do what everyone else started doing 10 years ago — signing up for Gmail.

The Thick of It-sounding Technology Transformation Programme has seen more than 2,000 civil servants from the Cabinet Office and Department for Culture, Media & Sport switch from creaking software to 21st-century cloud computing, via browser-based Google Docs, Calendar and Hangouts.

Is this a parting shot from Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, who’s bowing out of politics at the election?

“Yes, it’s a Cabinet Office programme and Francis Maude is the lead minister,” a spokesperson tells The Londoner. “I can also say it’s been tested for months and his office has been involved.

“We have a simple aspiration that civil servants should have access to modern, flexible technology which is at least as good as they have at home,” a Government spokesperson says. (Not quite Martin Luther King, is it?)

Previous IT upgrades such as 2013’s abandoned NHS records system cost the taxpayer a breathtaking £10 billion — this one is meant to save an estimated 40 per cent in costs. And with the launch of George Osborne’s new “Google tax” in April, the mandarins won’t feel conflicted about getting into bed with multinationals with non-British HQs.

But what about security? Although the Cabinet Office says Google Apps for Business has passed all the assessments, The Londoner is still a little amazed at the idea of all those state secrets hanging about in the Google cloud. And that’s before they discover Instagram …

Like father, like son

With academics, it seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Professor Simon Glendinning will be at the LSE’s Wolfson Theatre next week to deliver an inaugural lecture on … the need to abolish inaugural lectures. Those with long enough memories might remember Glendinning’s father, Professor Nigel Glendinning, an expert in Goya at the University of Southampton, gave his own inaugural lecture 50 years ago on … the need to abolish inaugural lectures.

Somehow Blair still has that magic ...

In the wake of attacks from big business, how do wealthy Labour members feel about their leader?

A fundraising dinner for Rachel Reeves MP’s campaign last night, held at the swanky Park Plaza hotel, provided them with the opportunity to show their loyalty with cold hard cash.

In the auction, a bottle of whisky, signed by Ed Miliband, went for a cool £400. Not bad, you might think. Until the next item — a copy of the Minimum Wage Act signed by Tony Blair — came up for grabs. Frenetic bidding stopped at £2,000.

The Londoner’s rough arithmetic says the capital’s champagne socialists value Blair’s signature at around five times that of Ed’s. Still work to do, then.

Labour wins, in the pain stakes

To Rivea, Alain Ducasse’s swish subterranean restaurant below Knightsbridge’s Bulgari Hotel, for a supper in aid of the Borne charity. Actresses Natascha McElhone and Ronni Ancona were the stars of the evening along with Dominic West and his landscape designer wife Catherine FitzGerald and writer AA Gill and his daughter Flora.

VIPs: Natascha McElhone and Ronni Ancona (Picture: Dave Benett)
Dave Benett

The feast was in honour of high-risk pregnancy expert Professor Mark Johnson, and a post-dinner comedy-off between Ancona and Gill argued whether labour was more painful than a kick in the balls. Labour pains won — just.

Let’s hope Salma figures it out

Salma Hayek, one of Hollywood’s top female stars, has struck out against the industry’s ingrained sexism. “We all know that every actor has a bankability number — this one will guarantee you $7 million, this one $2 million,” said Hayek, who was at Piccadilly’s Maison Assouline yesterday for Finch & Partners’ annual Women in Cinema lunch. “But what I want to know is: how are they getting the numbers for female stars when women are never given the chance to lead a movie?”

One of the party suggested that the studios make the numbers up. “Yeah, they make it up!” said Hayek, “but they make up that the women are very low!”

The actress was joined by many of the British industry’s biggest names, including Gemma Arterton, Gravity casting director Lucinda Syson and the film producer Alison Owen, mother of Lily Allen.

Syson argued that it was no coincidence that casting directors — a profession dominated by women — still don’t have a category of their own at most film awards despite the fact that directors such as Martin Scorsese have admitted that “more than 90 per cent of directing a picture is the right casting.”

Meanwhile, Arterton was more concerned with the casting itself. “Could we believe that Angelina Jolie is a refugee in Kosovo?” mused the Made in Dagenham star. “No, because she’s so famous and well known.” Oh, the perils of superstardom.

Simpson's set to close

Gyles Brandreth was on form presenting the Oldie of the Year Awards at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand last night but he began with a solemn announcement: Simpson’s, so favoured by Oldie readers and the venue of many of the mag’s literary lunches, is set to close. Perhaps it will be “Nando’s-on-Thames”, mused Brandreth — how would the clientele cope with peri-peri not steak and kidney?

Shoot, I don’t have cash

Last week The Times prophesied that cashless payments — ie, contactless debit and credit cards — would overtake cash in a matter of weeks. Boris Johnson’s cashless buses led the way but his sister Rachel ain’t so sure.

The journalist in this month’s Vogue is challenged to survive without hard cash for a week while bouncing between London, Paris and the countryside. She sneaks euros to Paris and pays at her card-free hair salon, and finally lets her husband splash the cash.

“On Saturday we went to stay with friends,” Johnson writes, “and I only managed to get another clear round in that day because my husband had cash to give the tips — it was a shooting weekend... you try asking a husky head keeper with a shotgun if he takes American Express.” Middle-class problems?

Stockpiling item of the day: pesto. Italy has seen a rise in pine nut thefts, with seven tons stolen from a warehouse in December. Whatever will the yummy mummies do?

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