Dear All
Are you a dumb bastard?
There are two possible answers to that question either you are a dumb bastard or you aren’t a dumb bastard.
Under Freedom of Information the public has a right to know what is going on in government, however it seems that Alex Salmond wants to shroud his government in secrecy.
Apparently we can’t handle complex issues or so Alex Salmond and his middle class clique think, its back to the old argument that Scots are ‘too poor, too wee and too stupid’.
Information Commissioner Rosemary Agnew has hit out at the erosion of citizens’ rights under the SNP Government.
She says that the Scottish Government under Salmond has presided over an “unacceptable” erosion of the public’s right to information.
Complaints about secrecy among SNP ministers have almost trebling according to Agnew.
The most damaging thing about Salmond’s right wing government is that Scots now have fewer rights to know about the way public bodies operate than they did when the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act was passed ten years ago.
Is Alex Salmond clever?
My personal view is no, he is not clever, he is an opportunist who makes knee jerk decisions and gets a lot wrong, his popularity is based on the public disliking the Labour Party.
He was in the right place at the right time, its called luck, and his luck is running out.
We now see Alex Salmond undertakening a court battle to fight against ordinary Scots seeking information.
Recently Alex Salmond was publicly booed.
The court case is another nail in his political coffin and also that of the independence cause, ‘you can’t trust Alex Salmond because Alex Salmond doesn’t trust you’.
You are not smart enough, its just him and his nasty poisonous little clique who have the tools to run Scotland, people like you and me have to be ‘managed’.
Unfortunately for Salmond, Information Commissioner Rosemary Agnew takes a different view and wants him to reveal whether his government has received legal advice about the status of an independent Scotland’s EU membership.
As well as the current court case, she highlights the growing number of quangos and PFI (public finance initiatives) that are funded through public cash, but exempt from FoI.
For the opposition parties, they have been handed genuine political gold as they claim that the SNP is treating Freedom of Information with “utter contempt”.
Ms Agnew said:
“An ever-growing concern is the loss of rights occurring through the delivery of public services by arm’s-length organisations and third parties. FoI was introduced for a reason: to ensure that the delivery of public services and the spending of public money is transparent, open and accountable. It is simply not acceptable that citizens’ rights continue to be eroded through complex changes in the delivery of services. This must be looked at as an immediate priority.”
Appeals against FoI decisions by public bodies have risen 24 per cent in the past year.
Labour MSP Paul Martin said the SNP Government had an “obsession with secrecy”.
He added:
“The Freedom of Information Act is a pillar of our democracy and the SNP is treating it with utter contempt.”
Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said;
“The fog of secrecy enveloping the SNP government grows thicker by the day.”
Only stupid people conceal the truth to protect their own embarrassment, this is a government that many will be glad to see the back of, their majority created arrogance among genuinely untalented people that they were the ‘new establishment’.
More and more people are turning against Alex Salmond and his government, if he thinks people are too stupid, perhaps he should ask his officials to draw his list of failures.
He can then see his catalogue of failures on how he was unable to make the right judgment calls, time and time again.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
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