PanopticonUK: Freedom of Information - except when the Government want to keep secrets!

Wednesday 25 February 2009

Freedom of Information - except when the Government want to keep secrets!

I just read the following report in The Times:-

Jack Straw revealed that he was considering a clampdown on freedom of information laws after telling the Commons that he will veto the publication of Iraq war Cabinet minutes.

New restrictions could be placed on the disclosure of the identities of civil servants, the release of Cabinet documents and the publication of advice by officials, it emerged yesterday.

Ministers and officials are considering using the Dacre review to try to introduce new restrictions on releasing information after a huge backlash in Whitehall over the material they are being forced to release by the Information Commissioner and Tribunal.

Seems that the government doesn't like the idea of freedom of information and honesty when it is turned on them! As soon as the people of the United Kingdom start asking questions about how our representatives are running the country and spending OUR money they start blustering and trying to claim exemptions or change the rules to shut us up!

It is about time that this apalling excuse for a government offered us a general election so that we can show them how much we agree with their maladministration, oh of course they know what the result is likely to be don't they - not a chance then I suppose!

READ MORE at:-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5798995.ece

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Quotes

Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.

. . . the same tendency exhibits itself today even in those communities where the name of socialism is most abhorred. When once the majority has determined that a certain regime is beneficial, that regime without further hesitation is forced ruthlessly upon the individual man. It never seems to occur to modern legislatures that although “welfare” is good, forced welfare may be bad . . . . in the interests of physical well-being the great principles of liberty are being thrown ruthlessly to the winds.

(J. Gresham Machen - christianity and liberalism)

"The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed."
Adolf Hitler

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

–Pastor Martin Niemöller

“Children will not remember you for the material things you provided but for the feeling that you cherished them.” –Richard L. Evans

“Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?” –Jane Nelson

“Trusting children with books is a revolutionary act. Books are, after all, dangerous stuff. Leave a child alone with a book and you don’t know what might happen.” — Susan Ohanian

In a free society, the rights and laws protect the individual from the government.

In a dictatorship, the rights and laws protect the government from the people.

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus

Some permanent links and longer quotes

Food for thought from Philip Pullman
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The Childrens' Story
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“The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right...The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” - John Stuart Mill
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PanopticonUK

Wednesday 25 February 2009

Freedom of Information - except when the Government want to keep secrets!

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Post a Comment

Quotes

Links

Blog Archive

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Some permanent links and longer quotes

PanopticonUK

Wednesday 25 February 2009

Freedom of Information - except when the Government want to keep secrets!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Quotes

Links

Subscribe To

Blog Archive

Followers

My Blog List

Some permanent links and longer quotes