The reputation of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's increasingly hapless government took another ding this weekend when it was revealed that a senior adviser had lost his BlackBerry in China earlier this year, "after being picked up by a Chinese woman who had approached him in a Shanghai hotel disco. The aide agreed to return to his hotel with the woman. He reported the BlackBerry missing the next morning."

British officials say the theft is consistent with previous Chinese espionage operations, which is unusual in that Brown's government generally needs no help in losing sensitive documents and top-secret information. The Times of London notes that "US intelligence and security officials were debating whether to warn business people and other travellers heading to the Beijing Olympics about the dangers posed by Chinese computer hackers."

Brown's Labour party, currently down twenty percent to the opposition Conservatives in the polls, must hold an election in 2010, which means they've only got a year and change to lose a whole bunch of other shit if their attempt to posthumously rehabilitate James Callaghan's reputation as Labour's most inept Prime Minister in the modern era is to prove successful.