Happy Valentine's Day from RPC: Love (or hate) data?

So it is that time of year again. Love is in the air - roses, prosecco (if you're lucky, champagne), chocolates (in boxes covered in sickly hearts as though a heart surgeon has gone serial killer – yes, we're big fans of Luther).

Have you prepared?  Everywhere is booked up.  Panicked other halves are fighting over the last box of chocolates in the corner shop (you are going for [insert unfavoured brand of chocolates which we have been forced to redact]?  Seriously?). And wondering whether that restaurant reservation at 10pm (nothing earlier) gives the game away that you had totally forgotten about it.…  

So you arrive for your reservation to be confronted with more enforced romance. The tables of those long timers (who we all secretly envy); those who would rather avoid one another but have run out of excuses (and conversation); the couples who managed to get a baby sitter and are knocking back the wine in celebration and then there's the dates.  Don’t you love those "few dates in daters" for whom overthinking the prospect of spending the evening alone (yet again) prompted them to awkwardly blurt out an invitation to their latest Bumble match. And then we have to spare a thought for the single people. Have they been furiously swiping to try to fill that hole in their life but without success?  Will they drink their sorrows away or celebrate the endless opportunities of singledom? Or do they do a Bridget Jones, hibernate, eat ice cream and watch a rom com?

However you'll be celebrating or commiserating this glorious anniversary of romance - and we speak on behalf of all at RPC in wishing you the happiest of Valentine's Days – we wanted to remind you of one potential true love which is available to all.  Now we say "potential" as we know that after the implementation of GDPR your relationship with data may be going through a rocky patch.  For some of you it may just never recover.  But the reality is you're still going to have to see it every day, so whether you are a lover or a hater, in typical RPC style we want to make your loving (or loathing) that bit easier. Over the next 12 months we will be issuing a data protection toolkit, addressing a fresh topic each month, which will hopefully ensure that by the time you reassess your relationship with data this time next year, if you're not head over heels, you will at least be able to stand the sight of it. Our first is a fitting start – it's on the meaning of personal data and will be released (to build up the tension) very shortly.

And, of course, over the next twelve months if you need relationship counselling then please do contact us and we are always more than happy to help.  And when we say relationship counselling we mean "data relationship counselling"… trust us when we say you wouldn't want relationship counselling from us.