When Freedom is Threatened

 

Several individuals have attempted to close this blog since it provides an often alternative view to that expressed by the Parish Council.  This has been played out at length in  Parish Council Minutes although as a private blog, it is no business of the Parish Council.

A recent parish council governance document - the Social Media Policy - accepted despite queries about the validity of some of it intentions attempts to enable the Parish Council to regulate all social media ,not just its own.  This would appear to be a dangerous prerogative by a council since it seems to attempt to censor anything of which it would not approve.

It also seems to confuse in a very dangerous way freedom of information with freedom from information.

Freedom from information is not the intention of the Freedom of Information Act although there are some who would try to interpret it in this very dangerous way, paving the slope downwards and backwards to a medieval oligarchy and autocracy.  

Requests for information by members of the public have been either refused or side-stepped.  And this is why the Freedom of Information Act exists - to guard against any efforts to limit/hide information held by public bodies.  At the end of the day information held by councils is public property,  unless there are good reasons to show/prove otherwise.     

            

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