What was Michael Matheson actually doing ?

[strichener]

On 12/11/2023 at 14:52, Soapy FFC said:

That's the thing that gets me apart from the entitlement that he showed in in thinking we should pay for his behaviour. Why is it even possible for a mobile phone company to allow anyone to rack up an £11000 bill in a week. Where are the affordability checks? If you go for credit anywhere else they will check you can afford to pay back the credit. Mobile phone companies seem to be able to bypass these checks and just let you incur massive debt. I know there are nominal limits on roaming bills, but they are so easy to opt out of they are almost meaningless in practice.

This wasn't a personal mobile contract.  The question is why the contract holder (i.e. the parliamentary corporate body) did not set spending caps.

[houston_bud]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-67401875

Definitely been looking up some weird Willie Thorne if you ask me. 

[superbigal]

Michael says fully investigated, so that's that. 

I'm pretty sure if my works IT were "fully" investigating they would not simply ask if I had been using it for business.

Is that what the cops do when confiscating laptops ?

 

[Trogdor]

I'm no apologist for the SNP, but this is becoming tiresome. MM has been shamed into paying it himself (eventually) as it was his error. Case closed for me.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

11 minutes ago, Trogdor said:

I'm no apologist for the SNP, but this is becoming tiresome. MM has been shamed into paying it himself (eventually) as it was his error. Case closed for me.

I have to agree.

It is incredibly easy to rack up roaming charges if no cap is in place.

Yes, he should have been more aware - but so should those who didn't set a cap. 

Yes, he should have just offered to pay in the first place - but did so eventually - that is the one thing he should be criticised for - but those throwing stones should be wary of the glass houses they are in.

Why asking to see the ipad? If it were government provided then it will have been secure, and also limited in what it could be used for in terms of browsing. I actually do believe he was using it for work-related purposes - I know several MPs, ex-MPs  MSPs and ex-MSPs who always did some work on holiday - it's part and parcel of the job.

If you are going to have a real go at Matheson then there are far more important issues he can be scrutinised on - especially in his previous roles as Transport Secretary and Justice Secretary - and now his current role as Health Secretary.

[Hedgecutter]

1 minute ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

I have to agree.

It is incredibly easy to rack up roaming charges if no cap is in place.

Yes, he should have been more aware - but so should those who didn't set a cap. 

 

I was in Morocco last month and realised it was over £5 per megabyte, which had me compulsively checking my phone data-roaming settings every morning in case I'd changed something when connecting to various WiFi networks.

£5/Mb is absolutely wild.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

41 minutes ago, Hedgecutter said:

I was in Morocco last month and realised it was over £5 per megabyte, which had me compulsively checking my phone data-roaming settings every morning in case I'd changed something when connecting to various WiFi networks.

£5/Mb is absolutely wild.

And that's not the highest either.

£7.50/Mb in Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Bhutan, Chad, Greenland, Lebanon, Madagascar, Sao Tome & Principe and Tunisia.

Cheapest I've seen for Morocco is £3/Mb.  With 1Mb you could send or receive about 6-8 emails without attachments or 2 emails with simple attachments. You could browse the web for around 10 minutes (depending on the website and content). Streaming audio would be a minute. You'd get less than a second of streamed video.

 

[BFTD]

Seems fair. Back in the Nineties, £3 would've got you delivery of a 1.44MB floppy disk packed to the gunnels with low-res 256 colour GIFs of the kind of stuff Michael wasn't downloading on his hols.

[houston_bud]

7 hours ago, Trogdor said:

I'm no apologist for the SNP, but this is becoming tiresome. MM has been shamed into paying it himself (eventually) as it was his error. Case closed for me.

Yeah, have to agree. The Tories calling on him to hand the ipad over are playing a wee game to try and make him look worse. I can kind of understand the politics of it but I'd much rather we had more serious politicians.

[Boo Khaki]

Obviously out of Ferries ideas.

[TheScarf]

Aye, why is this still being dragged out?  I know the Tories/BBC are SNPBad by default, but come on to fuck, move on.

[Leith Green]

1 minute ago, TheScarf said:

Aye, why is this still being dragged out?  I know the Tories/BBC are SNPBad by default, but come on to f**k, move on.

So he screwed up and used £11k of data - frankly, these things happen, and he is payign it back.

As a comparison, when Suella Braverman flew a dozen selected (Telegraph, Express, Mail types) journalists out to Rwanda to cover her "flagship" policy a year or so back it has since emerged that the cost - to the taxpayer - was >£1.5m.

That story was only covered under FOI by Peter Geoghan as no mainstream media touched it.

[TheScarf]

1 minute ago, Leith Green said:

So he screwed up and used £11k of data - frankly, these things happen, and he is payign it back.

As a comparison, when Suella Braverman flew a dozen selected (Telegraph, Express, Mail types) journalists out to Rwanda to cover her "flagship" policy a year or so back it has since emerged that the cost - to the taxpayer - was >£1.5m.

That story was only covered under FOI by Peter Geoghan as no mainstream media touched it.

Aye, but that was trying to stop brown people getting into England. That's what most Nigels want their money spent on, as opposed to feeding their own children, so money well spent.

[Hedgecutter]

2 hours ago, TheScarf said:

Aye, why is this still being dragged out?  I know the Tories/BBC are SNPBad by default, but come on to f**k, move on.

You can now see every single MM expense being scrutinized in the hope of having a headline involving him clawing back the £11k.

SNP's Michael Matheson embroiled in row over thirteen counts of taxpayer-funded 'extra BBQ sauce for +£0.99'.

"That £12.87"could have supplied X tins of beans & Y tins of sweetcorn to a foodbank that poverty stricken Scots are reliant on"

[scottsdad]

3 hours ago, TheScarf said:

Aye, why is this still being dragged out?  I know the Tories/BBC are SNPBad by default, but come on to f**k, move on.

We want confirmation of which bongo websites he was using, that's why. 

 

[Molotov]

Perhaps all work laptops should be put under an annual test to check for system vulnerabilities and prevent non-work related usage. 

Many companies “monitor” employees equipment and internet traffic.

[Molotov]

I used to work for a company in the year 2000 where we were analysing storage growth and capacity issues.
 

As an indirect result we were able to find all sorts of stuff on company servers. 

So one night over a few beers we created a SQL script to analyse the data called the FFF - “filthy file finder”.

On one scan at an investment bank we uncovered a sysadmin using multiple company servers to host a porn site. 

That was an interesting sales presentation to senior management in their plush boardroom. 

That FFF SQL script a major “player” in our little start up being bought out by a global IT company. 

[Molotov]

8 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

We want confirmation of which bongo websites he was using, that's why. 

 

Tractor Porn Part 2?  

[Hedgecutter]

6 minutes ago, Molotov said:

Tractor Porn Part 2?  

Tractor Porn 2: Horsepower

Or is it 'Fuel Injection System'? I can't mind if that's the subtitle for TP2 or TP3.

[superbigal]

If he was using the Ipad to watch the Teleprinter at 4.40 on a Saturday.

Should he be disciplined ?

Be quite interesting to know the actual IT rules for Gov officials.