Wiltshire County Council chiefs are still searching high and low for the missing memory stick that includes the bank details of 1,300 housing benefit claimants, which they admitted losing it last week.

I wish them the best of luck, and I hope they have tried looking down the back of the sofa, where they will probably find it, next to the missing remote controls.

Perhaps the CIA should look in the same place for details of exactly what was on 92 video tapes that the Americans made of interrogations of suspected terrorists.

The intelligence agency said last week it was having a good look for any remaining evidence after the videos themselves got destroyed. Somehow I'm not sure they'd want to find it, given that it probably shows them torturing terrorism suspects. Now I'm off on a conspiracy rant, could it be that these two data losses are somehow linked?

Is there somewhere in Wiltshire where housing benefit applicants are being tortured? Not, perhaps, by being shackled in orange jump-suits, but by being asked to fill in interminable forms and work their way through the mind-bending bureaucracy in which our council officers specialise.

"Enough", they plead, "no more forms, just let me go and I'll pay my own rent from now on." The evidence is all on that stick, and now they've conveniently lost it.