Nicola Murray, the newly appointed Minister for the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship, is already becoming a target of ridicule by an uncaring media, despite only being in her role for less than a week.
Even her two senior advisors (Glenn Cullen and Ollie Reeder) believe she is not making a good enough impression either with the media, the public and more importantly the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker.
To make matters worse, Glenn informs Nicola that there has been a massive data security breach, in which the Immigration Database has been accidentally wiped and there appears to be no backup.
This of course starts another blame game race in the department with Glenn, Ollie, Terri Coverley and even Nicola herself trying to distance themselves from the hugely embarrassing error, while quickly pointing the blame at others.
And just to compound Nicola's problems further is an off-the-record statement to some Guardian journalists about the data loss, along with her Department's apparent ineptitude in handling sensitive data. Unfortunately a freelance journalist overhears her statement and is prepared to publish it to the first newspaper that takes an interest!
Yet another intriguing episode, not least because of how it deals with internal departmental mistakes and glaring errors of judgement. As soon as there's a problem everyone is out for themselves, protecting their own self-interests even if it means pointing the blame, or even firing innocent people caught in the crossfire.
At the start of season 1 I thought Malcolm Tucker, was a pretty horrible, bullying and self-centred individual. But now it is apparent that Ministers, advisors, senior civil servants and the media will resort to any underhand tactic in order to either take all the glory when the going is good, or deflect all the blame when things are looking bad.
Even her two senior advisors (Glenn Cullen and Ollie Reeder) believe she is not making a good enough impression either with the media, the public and more importantly the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker.
To make matters worse, Glenn informs Nicola that there has been a massive data security breach, in which the Immigration Database has been accidentally wiped and there appears to be no backup.
This of course starts another blame game race in the department with Glenn, Ollie, Terri Coverley and even Nicola herself trying to distance themselves from the hugely embarrassing error, while quickly pointing the blame at others.
And just to compound Nicola's problems further is an off-the-record statement to some Guardian journalists about the data loss, along with her Department's apparent ineptitude in handling sensitive data. Unfortunately a freelance journalist overhears her statement and is prepared to publish it to the first newspaper that takes an interest!
Yet another intriguing episode, not least because of how it deals with internal departmental mistakes and glaring errors of judgement. As soon as there's a problem everyone is out for themselves, protecting their own self-interests even if it means pointing the blame, or even firing innocent people caught in the crossfire.
At the start of season 1 I thought Malcolm Tucker, was a pretty horrible, bullying and self-centred individual. But now it is apparent that Ministers, advisors, senior civil servants and the media will resort to any underhand tactic in order to either take all the glory when the going is good, or deflect all the blame when things are looking bad.
