Tom has left the building

Former Tony Blair spin doctor Tom Kelly has left High Speed 2 Ltd after over five and a half years, New Civil Engineer revealed on 14 August (then took the story offline, and then put it back again).

Mr Kelly, who utterly failed to turn public opinion on HS2, is understood to have left HS2 Ltd at the start of August. The company ‘has lined up Aileen Thompson as Kelly’s replacement’.

[HS2 director for stakeholder engagement exits, Tim Clark, NCE, 15 Aug, 2019]

Kelly’s departure also comes weeks after the departure of HS2’s phase one managing director Jim Crawford.
[…]
Earlier this month the Serious Fraud Office also launched a call for evidence regarding whether HS2 had breached the law relating to the acquisition of properties along the route.

The fish and the badger

One of the features of Google’s Chrome browser, used by millions of people around the world, is the ability to install [software] extensions. Because of security risks, Google has decided that installation of extensions should generally only be possible via its own Chrome webstore (https://chrome.google.com/webstore).

Video download helper on Chrome webstore

One of the extensions currently installable from the webstore (and therefore presumably considered ‘secure’ by Google) is “Video download helper” by www dot thevideomate dot com.

BBC website, “Video download helper” disabled

But when this extension is enabled and third party websites such as the BBC are visited, it appears to result in information being sent to www dot superfish dot com.

BBC website, Video download helper enabled

Oddly enough, at the time of writing, Google’s “Contact us” facility for reporting issues with Google products “right away” doesn’t even list Chrome as a ‘product’, and doesn’t really provide a way of making contact “right away”. Even if Chrome were listed in the product options, there would be no means of actually communicating a problem.

Google ‘contact us’ doesn’t facilitate contact, and doesn’t list Chrome as a product