Which leads you to wonder why the headline contains the phrase "with the aid of the Conservative Party".

Hmmm. I couldn't even be bothered to read your example error message, in a thread about error messages. I'm deeply unconvinced that any user will do so. Someone else had the right answer above - eliminate as many error messages as possible, ignoring likely transient problems (like network outages) until they become critical, and log them somewhere that an admin (or better still, power user) can see and read them when necessary. Alerting the admin or power user via SMS or email is also a good plan. Logging to a database and including stuff like IP address, error class, code etc. such that you can query the results and look for patterns is also a good idea. Those patterns can be used to help you determine what are transient or hardware problems, and what are problems with your UX (and what are bugs!) Essentially, admit defeat on the error messages, and try to solve a different problem; how do we stop our software getting the way of our user's objectives.