So now we all know that the General Election is scheduled for May 6th.
Thanks to the inability of Bob Ainsworth - the Defence Secretary - to keep his stupid mouth shut, the date has been revealed long before Labour would have liked. I'm really not sure why the election date should be such a big secret, - I can't think of any advantage that could be gained by the opposition by knowing in advance - but the government seemed to think it was.
It's something of a feature of this government - their obsession with secrecy. Like deciding to keep the report into the "suicide" of Dr Kelly secret for 70 years or refusing to release the damning report into the failure of social services in Doncaster to prevent two well known and vicious young thugs from torturing and almost killing two brothers while at the same time using secret courts to enable social services to wrench children from the bosom of loving families for the flimsiest of reasons.
Or the secrecy that results in the government announcing that the "terrorist threat" level is to be raised from one subjective and undefinable level to another, but prevents them from telling us why they do this.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that it is not necessary for a government to have secrets - of course it is. But those secrets should only be things that could, if known to our enemies, compromise national security. That doesn't apply to the date of a General Election, the failure of a local authority department or the reason why a child who is happy with his family who love and cherish that child is taken away and never allowed to see them again.
And, of course, in the interests of national security, it would help if we had a Defence Secretary who knew how to keep his big mouth shut - but this government's obsession with keeping secrets that have nothing to do with national security is symptomatic of something else.
And let's be clear about something else. National security is not intrinsically linked to the fate of the Labour party, the Prime Minister or anyone in government - so national security does not include information which could be damaging to the Labour party's election prospects.
But a government that uses the pretence of national security to keep secrets that have nothing to do with the security of the nation is suggestive of a government with something to hide and, possibly, something to fear.
2 comments:
It is just the paranoid mentality that they developed in empathy with their great mentor, Joseph Stalin.
On the social services point. I take it you were indirectly referring to the woman with 'learning difficulties' who had her child taken away by social services, whereas social services did nothing about the two vicious boys who we have all been reading about.
I think the answer is simple:
The 'learning difficulties' woman was an easy target and a tick in the box for social services in removing a child from a hazardous family situation. No doubt the parents of the two feral brats were extremely vicous people themselves meaning that fear prevented social workers from dealing with them properly. The authorities always seem to go down the line of least resistance to meet their government targets.
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