BBC and the UK government are in cahoots

I saw your article on the latest issuance from HMG's Department of New Websites: UK government site lets you snoop on neighbours

While the site was [moderately] interesting, what I found extremely interesting was the appearance of a BBC URL in my browser's cache, when I had only visited the Office of National Statistics site.

A quick check revealed that the main UK Interactive Map, used to locate an area via the scripting link at the bottom of the Neighbourhood Statistics start screen, was being sucked from the Beeb:

http://nessw3sp3.mh.bbc.co.uk/output3/WardAdmin2003_NESSM3182480412025.png

As you zoom into the map, down to individual ward area, each graphic is drawn from a bbc.co.uk url, strangely with an ONS copyright notice on it. Being a bit nosey [and having some time on my hands] I followed this curiosity a bit further.

Doing a Sam Spade on nessw3sp3.mh.bbc.co.uk resolves it to 212.58.231.23, registrant the British Broadcasting Corporation, obviously. Feed that IP address into your traceroute of choice and you end up at onswww2.mh.bbc.co.uk (still BBC Internet Services). However if you feed the IP number into your web browser [as http://212.58.231.23] it shows up as National Statistics Online! ONS at the beginning of the Beeb url [onswww2] a coincidence? Probably not. Feeding the Statistics Office's homepage into a traceroute [www.statistics.gov.uk] ends up back at the Beeb once again [212.58.231.21 - onswww0.mh.bbc.co.uk].

It seems that there are four National Statistics "front pages"/whole sites hosted at:

http://212.58.231.21 [onswww0.mh.bbc.co.uk]
http://212.58.231.22 [onswww1.mh.bbc.co.uk]
http://212.58.231.23 [onswww2.mh.bbc.co.uk]
http://212.58.231.24 [onswww3.mh.bbc.co.uk]

visible via a browser of your choice. All located on bbc.co.uk domains!

Why on earth would an HMG outfit like the ONS, with a ".gov.uk" url, be being hosted by the BBC? Are the BBC even aware? They must be, surely? I was going to ask someone of the "technical" persuasion at the BBC, but gave up trying to find anything other than the automated feedback forms. Maybe you have a contact somewhere in one of the BBC's technical departments that you can ask?

Not wanting to dig out my tinfoil hat just yet, but the huge directory at http://nessw3sp3.mh.bbc.co.uk/output2/ appears, to my untrained eye, to be a more or less real-time history of area/ward graphics requested. Are they gathering even more statistics on the fly?

I'd be interested to hear your comments,

Cheers m'dears.

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