173 patient medical documents this time. The cache of personal information was discovered in a bag near Kingston Hospital. The files contain data on cancer and HIV patients plus ‘information on those attending conception and addiction clinics, as well as sexual disease and hepatitis test results’. Fortunately, the records are anonymised. But the hospital, ironically an NHS Trust, has no idea how the files escaped. Patients, or customers as they’re probably known these days,......

>>Stop the Press Book Slam is at The Big Chill House this Sunday 2pm – 11pm. It's free and perfect refuge for those dodging Glastonmuddy… Just out the Van: Literary High Tea launches in the heart of Bloomsbury on Sunday, featuring readings from Toby Litt, Heidi James, Kate Ansell and Jeremy Sheldon accompanied by a menu of tea and scones. 4pm-6.30pm Sunday 24 June, £12.95/£8.95, The Great Russell Suite, The Montague on the Gardens,......

Quick! Where‘s your Oyster card? Haven’t got one? Not for long. London's mayor is to give away 100,000 free Oyster cards, which offer cheaper travel on public transport. Ken Livingstone said the cards had revolutionised travel in London, speeding up buses and Tubes and reducing queues. Since the financial merits of having an Oyster card aren’t really debatable anymore, the only thing left to ask is: are you for an increase in the widespread......

The government's plans to bring in high tech ID cards may have to go back to the drawing board after a Guardian investigation showed that biometric data could be electronically attacked and cloned with a £174 microchip reader. We say may have to back to the drawing board because so far the only response to the investigation has been a shrug of the governmental shoulders. Opposition parties have been quick to point out the......

Tube union leaders have pledged to resist proposals to issue ID cards to London Underground engineers and maintenance staff. Their resistance will take the form of strike action of course. The Sun is reporting that none of the officers involved in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes will face criminal charges. Apparently “There is no realistic prospect that they will be prosecuted,” and there is a “plausible explanation” for changing the police logs.......

Clarke Remains Defiant After Lords Defeat Home Secretary Charles Clarke has vowed to battle on with his proposed ID cards legislation after it was defeated in the Lords last night. Their Lordships, many of whom come from a law background, feel that making the cards compulsary, is an infringement of people's human rights, and as such, is beyond the power of Government. They duly voted 227 to 166 against the proposal last night. Whether......

Hats off to London MPs Kate Hoey (Vauxhall), Rudi Vis (Finchley & Golders Green) and Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North), who were among the Labour rebels whose votes aided the defeat of the Religious Hatred bill. This New Labour fatwa was note-perfect Brazil, combining as it did an Orwellian assault on language and freedom with bureaucratic incompetence. File under "I" for "ID Cards". (On the subject of ID cards and bureaucracy, this story wins "headline......

With a lot of media attention diverted towards Ruth Kelly's supposed misdemeanors over at the Department for Education and Skills, it has been a fairly subdued week here in the Palace of Westminster. However, the fires are still raging over government plans to combat terrorism, including implementing biometric ID cards. The Terror Bill, which contains a clause that outlaws the "glorification of terrorism", was defeated in the House of Lords yesterday by 270 to......

Tommy Lee's in town. Don't worry about your other daughters though, he's left the rest of the Crue behind. Strange things are going on in the space within Lee's cranium known as Tommyland. Not only is he over here promoting his utterly bollocks new single, Good Times (out Monday), and equally bollocks new solo album, Tommyland, The Ride (Monday week), but he then went and cancelled the launch party. Seems it was worth losing......

The Government's proposed compulsory ID Cards are back in the news today with Met commissioner Sir Ian Blair telling the London Assembly that the cards would have to be "almost foolproof". Great. And following on from that we hope that the police almost arrest the right man, the courts almost recognise the innocent from the guilty and that the government almost doesn't fuck over the people that elected it. Normally we'd let loose a......

We like thinking of alternative worlds here at Londonist - it kills time while we wait for the Zappa on Zappa tickets to go on sale. We've done the 'if Hitler won the war' (great transport system - lousy foreign policy) and 'if Tony Blair wasn't an untrustworthy git' (too far fetched) scenarios and were looking for something new when we saw this over on the Beeb: Plans to charge to use city roads......

Emperor Blair is gathering a merry band of ne'er-do-wells around him with his not-quite new cabinet reshuffle. Causing the most controversy is a new educational post and peerage for Andrew Adonis. Here's what the Lib Dems have to say about him: "This is a man who has had no dialogue at all with the teaching profession, with parents, with other organisations, but has wielded unprecedented power, taking ideas direct from the US and implanting......