Boots is the latest company to be embarrassed by the loss of confidential information after a drug addict stole a back-up tape with details of customers to whom the company had sold dental insurance. Boots is blaming Medisure, the insurer, which is blaming the security firm that was transporting the tape. No one is saying much more, and the whereabouts of the tape, or indeed why it should have attracted the interest of an opportunistic thief, is unclear.

The thief was caught on CCTV. The pharmacist and the insurer have written to an unspecified number of customers reassuring them that the data, including dates of birth and bank account details, are inaccessible without specialist machinery. As The Register, the online IT magazine, points out acidly: “That's all right then, because surely there are no ties between thieves in this country and hackers in, for example, the former Soviet bloc?”

In pole position to bring you the news

I return from a short break to several unusual e-mails. There is an invitation to “the Third Global Congress of Women in Politics and Governance”, in October, in the Philippines. The theme of the congress is “Gender and Climate Change”. This is not some sort of Guardianista-baiting joke, but entirely genuine - three days, $2,000.

Elsewhere, a new trade association for lap, table and pole dancing club operators has been formed, which “aims to develop minimum standards of best commercial practice through the promotion of a Code of Practice”. Just how you draw up a code of practice for women who ... no, it doesn't bear thinking about. The world really has gone mad, hasn't it?

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Someone kindly sends me the newsletter from the Worshipful Company of Insurers, which solemnly records the letters of resignation from two members, Michael Bright and Philip Condon. Yes, I can see how getting seven and three years respectively for fraud after the collapse of Independent Insurance might limit your involvement in livery affairs.

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Staff at Threshers, the off licence chain that used to be owned by Guy Hands's Terra Firma, are upset at a new policy that the doors must be kept open at all times. It has been a bit parky out there, you may have noticed, and employees have been venting their anger in Off Licence News. The company won't comment, but staff claim that customers are put off from browsing because of the cold and say that turning up the heating is bad for the environment. “It also makes a mockery of the degradable carrier bags,” one complains.

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It was entirely predictable that some banking analyst would put pen to paper on the widely expected rights issue from Sir Fred “the Shred” Goodwin, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, with the title “Rights Said Fred”. First off the mark then, Dresdner Kleinwort. Note to younger readers: the original “Right Said Fred” was an unfunny “comedy record” from the 1960s. Note to older readers: it was also a pop band from the 1990s.

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