If you're curious to what happened during the 'desk-based virtual disaster' in the City yesterday (see Monday's Extra Extra for the original link) then this Reuters article gives a few clues.
Now as far as we're concerned a 'desk based virtual disaster' means writing a smutty email to your girlfriend/boyfriend and then accidentally sending it to the weird bloke in HR who you met in the lift once. But for the Financial Services Authority it means pretending that a "series of explosions" have gone off in London so they can "gauge how the financial industry's infrastructure would cope".
Now we don't mean to be pedantic about this but, didn't a series of explosions really actually go off in London a few months ago? Are they trying to tell us the banks hadn't seen that coming? Well yes, as it happens, they are:
London was hit by a series of explosions in July, which killed over 50 and injured hundreds during the morning rush hour, which led to banks scrambling to implement disaster plans and left thousands of workers with long treks home.
The words 'horse', 'bolted' and 'stable door' spring to mind.
So anyway yesterday around 80 banks, brokerages and insurers felt the impact of the simulated London explosions, which were then followed up by some more simulated explosions across the country.
And the main outocme of all this pretend bomb action? A "secure Internet site for authorities to discuss strategy."
A frigging message board? That's it?
We can see it now:
>>>HSBC writes: Yo d00d, my information recovery systems are so much kewla than yours.
>>>Barclays writes: LOL, j00 suX0rz!!!!!!! We haxx0rd your systems yesterday. j00d all be dead by now!P.S. If you hadn't worked it out already, we chose this image because it includes a 'desk based virtual disaster' of its own in the shape of that tie.
