Don’t be a pussy when it comes to data protection

We often hear about Health and Safety regs being used by jobsworths to avoid doing all types of things. Some of these stories are made up, others sadly real. Well I have a feeling ‘data protection’ or even referring to something as specific as the Data Protection Act* is being used almost as much.

My personal extreme on this came a number of years ago when I was moving house. I had previously registered my cat with a large pet store chain with one of those chips that sit just under their skin between their shoulder blades. It’s painless (trust me, I asked the cat) and seems like an effective way of making sure your cat doesn’t go missing, especially if – as with ours – they don’t like old-fashioned collars.

I’d been in the new house a couple of months before I realised the cat’s chip would only link him with our old address. Off I went to the pet store, sans cat.

I asked if I could get the info on their database (a national database?) changed, to reflect our new address.

“Can’t do that,” came the reply.

I asked why not.

“Because of data protection.”

I scratched my head and only a few hours later realised they didn’t mean my data protection – they meant my cat’s.

The last time I heard, this kind of legislation doesn’t apply to animals, however smart they are.

Anyway, our cat died about a year later. I cried a lot.

*(Yes, this earlier said ‘Freedom of Information Act’, like my cat was digging up government info.)