Having been set such a good example by our honourable members of the Houses Of Parliament I felt the need to tell the world all about me and my expenses in running this website. So there follows detailed information about this.
and for due to the need for
Cost of black ink and payments for
to demonstrate total clarity and honesty.
It must be somewhat embarrassing for the Lancashire police force. While they were unable/unwilling/uninterested in exposing the police officer writing the Night Jack blog about life as a police officer on the frontline in modern Britain, the amazing detective powers of the Times were able to uncover his identity. It’s a tale worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
There was this dastardly policeman who was telling the world how he saw and experienced life as a police detective. He was giving his opinion as we are supposedly entitled to do in a democracy. He wrote an award winning blog but preferred to maintain his annonimity. Not an unreasonable thing to do when your employer might object to some of the things you write.
Of course the ultimate employer is the taxpayer and we are surely entitled to know what is happening in our name. We know we cannot trust the public relations speak and the spin we get from politicians or public organisations. They are all attempting to show themselves in a good light and/or get re-elected and/or get extra funding. They all have an axe to grind and a point of view they hope you will believe whatever you might experience on the streets of modern Britain.
We the taxpayers are surely entitled to know what is really going on and if insiders feel able to publish their experiences from within these organisations we fund that is surely a good thing for democracy. We don’t have to believe what they say either but we don’t get genuine debate and information from the people in power because they all have their own axe to grind. They will say whatever they can get away with to avoid looking foolish, incompetent or dishonest.
We have seen this demonstrated very clearly with the MPs expenses scandal where only after a long battle was it accepted that the public had any right to know what our MPs were charging us in expenses. What a surprise that when we finally did start to find out, through a whistleblower, the public were outraged at the behaviour of many of these, supposedly, honourable members.
Whistle-blowers seem to be the only hope we have of knowing what really goes on in government, the civil service and other public bodies because it is not in the self interest of those who run these organisations to tell us.
We would expect our newspapers to be challenging the official view and attempting to find out what is real and what is spin. So, it seems shameful that for a two minute story that will probably be forgotten in less than a week the Times chose to ‘out’ the author of the Night Hawk blog after resorting to court action to fight a claim from the author that he should be entitled to remain annonymous.
The Times won that court case and published his identity. The award winning blog has now been removed so you can’t read it even if you want to. The author has been seen by his police employers and told not to be a naughty boy any more and the public have lost access to a knowledgeable source of information about what life is like in the police force.
Who gains from this? Certainly not the public and the Times should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. It seems likely that fewer people will put themselves in the potential firing line by blogging about what really goes on in their workplace. Perhaps the Times thought that this might reduce the numbers of people who blog to reveal information in the hope that they might give that information to newspapers instead. That seems unlikely and I would be surprised if anyone would give any sort of confidential information to any of the Times group newspapers after this expose.
There always was a standard among journalists and they were prepared to go to jail rather than reveal their sources. Now we have a newspaper eager to reveal a source for no purpose other than a two minute news story. This incident could have far reaching implications for the police officer concerned. I would expect this exposure to have a profound effect on his life in the future though most of us will probably never know. It is unlikely the Times will have any interest whatsoever in the future and they obviously don’t care about him or his family. Sadly, it seems, they don’t care much about good journalism or the public good either.
To think that once upon a time the Times was a highly respected newspaper. Now that reputation is thoroughly tarnished and thrown away for no good reason. It is a shame and a sad day for those who believe in speaking their opinion even though they have no desire to be splashed all over the newspapers. It is just a sad day.
After all the talk of a possible change in Prime Minister following the disastrous results the part enjoyed in the council elections and the European election it has all come to nothing because Gordon Brown likes his job.
It would appear that he convinced his Labour party MPs that he would now start listening more to the views of… well, himself it seems.
He has completely ignored the views of the electorate ever since he was crowned by a select group of self interested cronies to become Prime Minister.
Ever since that time he has regularly repeated that he will start to listen, but he never does. He like all the dubious MPs with their incredible expenses claims will cling to office and their salaries waiting to get their pension and bonus payments when they get kicked out. So, the electorate are denied democracy once again and we just have to wait until our unelected dictator decides the public is allowed to have their say.
In the meantime…
Here is a video of a constituent making use of the property their MP used our money to help keep in fine condition. Enjoy….