Lots of hysteria in the media, but nothing has changed, a London number is still 020 xxxx xxxx.

As usual maintain a straight face when someone tells you their number is 0207 blah, blah, blah, or 0208 blah, blah, blah, or even 0203 blah, blah.

The phone number as an IQ test, it's infallible in my experience. If people can't even get their own phone number right, can you trust them to do anything correctly?

A shop down the road still has 01 xxx xxxx above the door, a number scheme that was sent to /dev/null back in 1990, of course you can extrapolate the likely number for the shop from its location (outer London). But, I have my suspicions that the sign is intentionally wrong as a form of encoding to discourage stupid customers from phoning.

Via Currybetdotnet, and Phil Wilson, a classic example of un-joined up Government and a tacit admission of one of the many blinding flaws of an identity card system.

The Home Office Identity Fraud Steering Committee has a shiny new website about identity theft and how to avoid falling victim to it.

One of their gems of wisdom is Never carry documents or plastic cards unnecessarily, fair enough that makes sense.

Then, on their What Is Being Done page they try to sell us the advantages of an identity card. Where your entire identity can be encapsulated and easily carried on one simple (easily forgeable) piece of plastic. Run that one past me again?

You just couldn't make this stuff up. I wonder how many interesting facts will appear on Government websites from soon to be redundant civil servants, if we had a real freedom of information act this stuff wouldn't be hidden anyway...