Bag's Rants

Well when we meant open we really meant...

Seems that they are looking at changes to the Freedom of Information Act so that expensive enquiries can be rejected. Seems too many people have been finding out about too many secrets and that has to be stopped. They are looking at introducing charges for the requests as well. Read more here.

Of course the mere fact we are already paying for these clowns is an irrelevance or that there should be anything that is difficult about gathering together some information. If the information exists then collecting it and supplying it can't be too difficult. If it doesn't exist then say so.

In my view, and I've said it before, everything that our government does should be available on the web. Bar of course a genuine exception on national security grounds such as names of spies, missile targets and similar. Decided by an independent party not our masters. The costs for this would be minimal. The systems are already there and then there wouldn't be any requests, expensive or otherwise as people could happily trawl to their hearts content.

As it is this change will only be to cover up things like how much the taxpayers pays for Blair's holiday costs and Prescott's council tax payments as, in a government that can't balance it's own books, it would clearly be too difficult for our government clowns to work either of those out.

posted by Bag @ 7:36 pm