I, In The Sky

Ha!  Do You See - 
O you do.  Actually, that was last Saturday, when I had to work in the office, waaay up at the top of the Dark Tower, which is where the "Sky" bit of today comes from.  Art?

Dark Tower in the dark

     Bear in mind that yesterday was a Bank Holiday, and so is Monday, and our team never work on Sundays, and then consider that, even as I type these words, half a dozen unfortunates are slaving away on e-mails or answering phone calls.  What's more, since we were closed yesterday, there'll be a backlog of e-mails to work through and doubtless a big spike in phone calls from stores.  The only saving grace when working a Saturday for the Enormous Anonymous Employer is that the candidate phone line is turned off, so you don't get swamped.

A metaphor

More Of Work
This was triggered by a sideline on the font of all that's fit to be writ, the BBC.  Also, it embarrasses the government, which people always find amusing.  Briefly put, the Department for Digital, Cultural, Media and Sport (why Sport? one wonders) inadvertently sent out contact details for hundreds of journalists, which they most emphatically should not have done.  Data Protection Breach, don't you know.  And, they are responsible for maintaining data security.  Will they end up fining themselves 5% of their Department's annual budget?  Conrad rather doubts it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47962405

      Therein the link for you.  

Emphatically NOT my Enormous Anonymous Employer

     I don't think I've mentioned this before, and I have checked diligently for about five minutes already, but the reason people in HR take Data Protection VERY VERY SERIOUSLY is down to some wally from Morrisons, one Andrew Skelton.  Miffed at being subjected to a disciplinary - O just you wait Andrew! - he decided to get his own back.  His position as a Senior Data Auditor allowed him access to every employee's pay details, which he promptly posted on the internet.
     He may be getting out of jail on licence this year, as he got an 8 year sentence.
     
                                                    They seemed kind of appropriate
     Morrisons now face a class action from about 5,000 individuals who are suing for identity theft, loss of earnings, a hole in their jeans pocket and just about any excuse reason to chisel money out of the big M.  Say they go for £10,000 each and end up with only £5,000 - that's still £5 million.
     That, however, is tiddlywinks compared to the fine that can be levied for the actual data breach; this used to have a ceiling of £500,000 but this was changed a few years back to 5% of annual turnover, which could be up to £850 million for the Big M.
     Food for thought.*



     Wow, that was serious stuff, indeed.  Quickly!  Deploy some silly nonsense!

Nicholas Nickleby
I am up to Page 520, which still leaves 400 to go.  So you will be hearing about this again, you lucky people!  At this point Nicholas has departed from the acting troupe he had joined, to considerable success and acclaim.  Dickens pokes satirical fun at the acting profession in a manner that implied he had detailed inside knowledge thereof.  Art?

Mister Crummles, director, bestows a theatrical goodbye upon Nick.

     Dickens also mentions the two "Patent Theatres", which I'd heard about yet knew not wot of.  Apparently only 2 theatres, one at Drury Lane and another at Lincoln's Inn Field, were allowed to put on Serious Dramas, since they had patents granted to them by the crown, which is where the term "Theatre Royal" comes from.  Other acting companies got round this by adding in songs and dances, in order that their performance wasn't Serious enough to risk prosecution.  The observation of this rule waned over time and was abolished a few years after NN was published.

Drury Lane's interior.  Very ornate.

     There you go, light and frothy nonsense after all that financial stuff.  How lucky you are.**

Ol' Pat's Answers
To questions no one asked.  The question, in this case, was "Name some failed sci-fi or fantasy shows of the late Eighties or early Nineties".
     The names I've given are all out of sequence, but if you want them in the order Ol' Pat supplies 'em, go check him out on Youtube.
     Thus we come to "Time Trax", which is the only series he mentions that got a second season, before the studio pulled the plug.  Not on budget or reviewing grounds, but some rather vague reason about wanting to go in a different direction.  Nor-nor-west?  Art!

Our hero

     The premise was that about 100 criminals from 2193 had escaped two hundred years into the past, by paying a scientist who Just Happened To Have Created A Time Machine.  Always handy when you have a chap like that in the offing.
     Of course the law enforcement agencies of the future are NOT HAPPY about this, and send a single person back to 1993 to apprehend these criminals and send them - er - back to the future.  Only one person makes the casting cheaper, one supposes, though I bet they use the excuse that too many people would screw up the time-lines and change all the forks into spoons.  Hello?  You've already got 100 criminals on the loose, what's the harm in sending back as many as three or four policemen?

He does have a hologrammatic helper.  Okay, make that 1.5 policemen.

Finally -
I just had to stick this in to go over the 1,000 word mark, or, as we call it here at BOOJUM! "the ton".

Not a Photoshop!

*  Do you see wh - O you do.
**  You ARE!