Sleep safely in your beds kids, everything's in hand

Well, you're safe from the attack of the bloggers, anyway. According to Guido Fawkes, the Home Office is employing 12 librarians to... read blogs on a weekly basis and see what they say. Wow... just makes me feel so safe from the terrorist threats. Well done, Home Office - another proof that putting a tough-talking right wing tosser in charge of a Government department merely ensures that it wastes its money in an even more spectacularly dumb fashion than it did under his predecessor.

Fawkes even offers them an alternative strategy:

"Guido uses Google Alerts, Blogpulse and Technorati to track every mention of him on the web. Total cost £0.00."

Heaven only knows what they're paying the 12 spook-o-geeks, but one imagines it's costing you, the British taxpayer, rather more than it's costing Guido (and countless thousands of other people with access to freeware) to do it his way. What's even better, is that it seems at least in part to be for the purposes of spin, as much as for national security. How pathetic can you get:

"Sir! Sir! 004 1/2 is reporting that Osler said something nasty about us on the web!"

"Right Carruthers! This is a job for Agent Akehurst!"

Rest easy tonight folks. And don't have nightmares. Nothing's gonna happen to you. Not on John Reid's watch.