Andrew Marr and The Silent State

Always work from home Monday and always listen to Start the Week while I check emails and sort out my diary. One particular guest, Heather Brooke, and her talk on the secret British society really resonated with me and it is quiet scary stuff. But then why am I surprised over the years I have been in business I have come across this time and again, call up a PLC or any company organisation and ask for the name of a director/partner and there is every chance you will be told we are not allowed to give the names. Oh really, why?
Go to a website in the UK and try to find out the same information about a company and so often it’s made as difficult as possible to find out anything about the people who run it. Go to an American website they will give you chapter and verse on every one who works there. I have noticed it has got better over here since the take up on Linkedin and Google will get you almost any name if you dig hard enough. But one of the things she raises, and which is something I have always resented, is the culture of arrogance found in the public sector and her observation about .. ‘the extent to which the government collects information on us while refusing to make civic information available to the public.’

The demise on local papers and journalists who covered local council meetings is also another great loss and a allows these petty little people even more power without accountability. This is definitely a book I will buy as soon as it is published.
Seems winter has returned and I have had to order yet more oil. We want to move the tank this Spring to make way for an extension, so I requested 300 only litres please but was told they cannot deliver less than 500 litres because Trading Standards, (not H&S sic), set that amount as the minimum. Can someone please explain that one to me?

The details of some MPs’ expenses claims – duck houses, moats, bathplugs and chandeliers – are now well known, but we would all still be in the dark were it not for the persistence of one campaigning journalist. Heather Brooke took on the Establishment in her battle to get access to MPs’ expenses but was met with secrecy, bureaucracy and obstruction from government officials. In her new book, The Silent State, Heather Brooke examines the extent to which the government collects information on us while refusing to make civic information available to the public. She talks about why public information, gathered at public expense, belongs to the people.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 10:45 am and is filed under Chester, Freedom of Information, Government and SMEs, Local information, Moral questions, Radio 4, SMEs, Serendipity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.