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The Spectator’s Notes

Charles Moore

Wednesday, 14th November 2007

Politicians find it impossible to say they are against Freedom of Information because it sounds as though they must be hiding something if they do so. But the way FOI is now being used means that government will become more and more secretive. When David Cameron suggested in Parliament last week that Gordon Brown had not been contemplating changing the rules on inheritance tax until the Conservatives proposed doing so, the government used FOI to try to refute this, publishing document-based accounts of what had happened. This was opposed, I gather, by Treasury officials who could see that if recent government documents get dragged into party political games no one will commit his honest advice to paper. Confidence (meaning confidentiality) is closely allied to confidence in the broader sense of the word. In Washington, where Freedom of Information also causes trouble, a circumvention has been found. Post-it notes, apparently, do not have to be released. Therefore the most important bits of government policy are now written and recorded on tiny, sticky, yellow squares.

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Edward Cooke

November 20th, 2007 12:11am

There may not have been a cheap point to be made about the gun culture of Finland but the event reinforces the point that gun control does not control gun crime. Washington DC has had an outright ban on handguns for 30-years and it is the murder capital of the United States. Gun control simply means that law-abiding citizens have no defense against criminals.

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