Theresa May
This evening, I attended a lecture given by Home Secretary Theresa May, one of the lectures in the Speaker’s 2012 Lecture series on ‘Ministers and Government’. She recounted the occasion when she became Home Secretary and found that on her desk in the Home Office she had a secure ‘phone. After about a week, the ‘phone rang. She answered it, wondering who it could be and at the same time, she admitted, with some trepidation. ‘I kid you not’, she said, ‘a voice at the other end said “Hello, is that Specsavers?”‘
She did not recount what she said in response or, indeed, who was calling.
Good to see the Home Sec wasn’t making it up.
I hope that’s been worked into a good anecdote or it’s a deeply damming display of security problems.
Was it Brodie Clark on the other end of the line?
Does this mean that there is an optician somewhere in Surrey who authorised the relaxation of passport controls at UK airports last summer?
If only we’d known that the confusion was a simple case of “wrong number”, it could have avoided so much unpleasantness.