Governments aren't nimble

Richard North notes the risibly flat-footed response of EU governments to their own policies on emissions reductions now that they are being helped to start understanding the possible impacts of their ignorant grandstanding.

Rhetoric is one thing but – to no one's surprise – economic reality is another.

Some of the main economic landmarks are changing rapidly and interventionist governments' policies will never be able to keep up with this speed of change.

For instance, the Financial Times reports that

Prices of top-quality wheat jumped 25 per cent to a record high on Monday in their largest one-day increase as Kazakhstan, one of the largest grain exporters, said it would impose export tariffs to curb sales.

The move, which follows similar export restrictions in Russia and Argentina, is likely to put further pressure on already tight global wheat supplies, analysts said.

And of course demand from industrialising countries is still shooting up.

In a leader the FT comments that some factors affecting the price of food are temporary. "But the biggest structural change is biofuels."

Over the next few years, therefore, prices should stabilise as supply increases and stocks are rebuilt. In the meantime, those governments that are subsidising biofuels need to cough up and help fund the World Food Programme. The world has enough food to feed everybody – if there is the will to do so.

There is no chance that an interventionist supranational government seemingly making policy based on bad science with the consent of ignorant heads of government will be able to generate intelligent responses to these changes in anything like a timely fashion.

Another fast moving area is data encryption. Common laptop disk encryption products for Microsoft, Apple Mac and Linux operating systems can be easily overcome. Symantec's chief scientist comments that

The first thing to observe is that encryption technology from ten years can almost now be broken with a Casio watch. It's a war out there and hackers realise, that with enough motivation to break technologies, the gains are worth the effort.

ITPro notes that lost laptops are the most frequent cause of data breaches (36%), the use of paper records causes another 24%, while hackers, malicious insiders and malicious code combined lead to just 12% of such incidents.

Putting data in the hands of third-parties doesn't mean it's any safer, as some 38 per cent of data breaches were seen to be caused by external contractors or partners.

The researchers took the opportunity to renew calls for UK or EU data breach notification, but said it was necessary to create one legislation for companies to follow. Each of the 40 US states with notification laws has different legislation which requires separate filings. A multinational corporation faces even more different rules.

They said, "The worst thing that could happen is very harsh, detailed restrictive legislation. Government don't do a good job of legislating technology... we say use best practices." They also stressed the need for safe harbour clauses.

If you've done best practices and are at zero risk of a breach, you shouldn't be penalized... Don't punish a business which has done the right thing.

This is not EU governments' way. How likely are we to see another set of obsolescent prescriptive measures based on bad science?

Detailed government policymaking just can't keep up, especially as it comes with irrational baggage. In the energy field

Luxembourg, Finland, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other countries have all written to the EU industry commissioner Günter Verheugen, to ask for "swifter decisions" on how the EU plans will affect big energy consumers.

Expect our legislators to continue to think that they know best even though they can't even submit acceptable expenses claims and they think it's fine that Robber Conway is still an MP.