E-kidneys and Ann Widdecombe

(He wisely opted against a 'two for the price of one' offer.)

He claimed he was trying to raise money for his family - just over £30,000 in fact - but it turned out the man was a drug addict who needed the cash to buy his stash.

Having broken German transplant laws, he is now doing 100 hours community service. Presumably not on a dialysis ward.

This week's 'Speedy Gonzales' prize goes to our favourite MP, Ann Widdecombe.

Just before the last general election, we conducted a pre-election survey of MPs' high-tech credentials by sending over 500 of them an email purporting to be from a common or garden constituent. We wanted to find out how swiftly they responded (if at all).

Sadly, only 38 per cent bothered to click 'reply', which is pretty bad. But now some good news: that figure has this week gone up a tiny bit thanks to Ms Widdecombe, who has just got in touch. A mere five months late.

Her private secretary, Gloria Nicholl, was very apologetic. "Owing to a technical glitch emails sent to Ann Widdecombe have been centrally held on the House of Commons systems and not forwarded to her office. Yours is one of the several hundred emails that have suffered this fate and we're writing to apologise for this and have ensured that this will not happen again."

There's a note on Widdy's website which praises technology for allowing her to "speak to the voters wherever I am, whenever I want".

Err, yes... see http://www.annwiddecombemp.com if you must, and http://www.silicon.com/a44587 for the full results of our survey of MPs.

'Compare and contrast moment of the week'. Safeway has shut down its online shopping service. It wants to use the cash earmarked for the web to refurbish its real-world stores.

Meanwhile, Tesco said this week it expects its dot-com division to hit profitability by the end of the financial year. Its site attracted just under two million unique visitors in October, but these kinds of numbers clearly aren't as important for Safeway as having a nicely designed aisle.

The 'tell us something we don't know' award of the week goes to a couple of clever chaps at the University of Warwick, who have done some research and found that - shock horror - web users aren't geeks.

Quite the opposite in fact - we are (apparently) more sociable, more community-minded, better educated, more religious and richer than our offline chums (see http://www.silicon.com/a49433 for more of the stats). Feeling smug now?

Professor Andrew Oswald, who led the survey, believes it is "very useful in overturning some common stereotypes... It appears the web is helping to strengthen the quality of British society. Internet users are the best citizens, not the worst."

So can we please, please, please put this one to bed once and for all and have no more 'net users are/aren't geeks' surveys? Thank you.

'Service level agreement of the week': The UK military has been getting to grips with a new logistics system. A little birdie tells us that Brigadier Peter D Foxton had a meeting with the European head of EXE Technologies, the supplier of the system, to ensure the project was on track.

Apparently, the charming Brigadier promised the man from EXE that should the system fail, he would "introduce him personally to the business end of the British army officer's personal weapon, the Browning 9mm."

Now that's what we call a penalty clause. If only other army types had the same attitude: the National Audit Office released a report late last week which revealed that the Ministry of Defence spent £33m on IT hardware which either didn't work or was obsolete before it became operational. We tried to find out from the MoD where all that money had gone. Funnily enough, they wouldn't tell us (or didn't know). But hey: it's only tax-payers' money. Welcome to Mr Blair's open government (http://www.silicon.com/a49390 ).

Speaking of which, here's the 'scandal of the week'. Around £200m has been embezzled from a government-funded scheme (that'll be our money again then) to encourage people to get into IT.

The Individual Learning Accounts programme offered a £200 discount to anyone over the age of 19 who applied for maths or computer training. Private businesses were to provide the actual training and then claim the money back from the government.

Lots of lots of companies got involved, most of them perfectly legitimate. But the government's checking process wasn't too rigorous (it seems all you needed was a signature on a bit of paper to prove that you had a pupil).

This meant a load of unscrupulous 'training' companies signed up, claiming to have lots of trainees, when in fact they didn't. The government then gave them the money to train non-existent students.

IT services outfit Capita (familiarly known as Crapita to Private Eye readers) was paid £50m to run the project. It says "all companies underwent various verification procedures" and claims the partnership with the government was "very successful".

Strange then that the Department for Education and Employment blamed "poor administration" for the scheme's failure, which has now been scrapped altogether.

Lots of IT trainers are rather upset about this, given that they've lost revenue as a result of the scheme's premature demise. If you've been affected by this, let us know at editorial@silicon.com or post a reader comment at the bottom of the original story (http://www.silicon.com/a49462 ).

And finally, a real prize, this time for 'best use of the internet for business-to-business communications'. If you hadn't guessed, silicon.com won this particular gong at this year's Marketing magazine's award jamboree. Our innate modesty would normally mean we'd keep this quiet (obviously), but the judges were particularly impressed by our "loyal user base". So it's your award really, not ours.

The Round-Up's off to watch Gwynneth Paltrow's Oscar acceptance speech for the 37th time. Until next week, why not show just how loyal you are by reading some news...?