Labour MP hits out at two ministers, and ID scheme

A MAN UNEXPECTEDLY elected as a Labour MP has hit out against female ministerette Patricia Hewitt, and had a go at Intel too while he was doing her down.

Not to mention Interior Minister's David Blunkett's now infamous ID card.

Derek Wyatt, MP, an influential committee member in the Mother of Parliaments, took the rostrum at an event at groovy the St Martins' Hotel near Trafalgar Square earlier this evening and knocked companies and ministers down as if they were skittles.

Wyatt is a loose cannon, and all the more entertaining for that. How we and the other most important Internet people in the UK laughed.

He was a guest speaker at an event celebrating 10 years of Internet "entrepreneurnship" at which Hewitt and Sir Tim Berners-Lee only made appearances via video, unlike Wyatt and a man who runs Lastminute.com, of whom more, tomorrow.

In the case of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, it was a fleeting appearance, indeed. The video feed went down.

But Hewitt was word perfect in her video feed from somewhere in the West Country, suggesting that the government's broadband strategy was right on, and in 2014 she'd be there to celebrate online shopping.

Mr EasyJet appeared at the celebration, and other famous figures from the top 100 figures in the Internet world, including, of course, the INQUIRER.

Hewitt appeared on video successfully, but CERN star Berners-Lee video was inexplicably garbled and no one could understand what he was trying to say, because a blue screen of death interrupted his putative speech.

Wyatt opened his live appearance by saying after seeing Hewitt's speech that while she hoped she'd still be here in 2014, "bless her", he kind of doubted that.

He also hit out at the Labour government's ID card scheme while he was at it, saying: "I hope I can persuade the government to drop the stupid ID card. Not a chance."

He claimed he was attempting to start a sort of "Babbage Institute" to promote an international memorandum of understanding on the Internet.

Tim Berners-Lee, he said, deserved far more than a knighthood for more or less giving away the idea of the world wide web when he was at CERN. He didn't call his idea the TBL, said Wyatt.

Obviously the hacks attending this event occupied positions 98, 99 and 100 in the "top 100".

The event was jointly organised by E Consultancy and NOP - all the information you might ever need to know can be found here. µ