Saturday 11 September 2010

Transparency - Where (2)

Today the Telegraph repeats, in a slightly different version, the story concerning the Royal Mail 'sell-off' and once again omits any mention that this is due to EU requirements. This omission is compounded by Jonathan Isaby, writing on Conservative Home.  The Telegraph article states:
"The Coalition agreement committed the Government to ensuring "an injection of private capital into Royal Mail, including opportunities for employee ownership".However last night Mr Cable went further than the agreement, or his party’s election manifesto."
This statement means that, in effect, the Coalition lied and therefore mislead the electorate with their 'agreement document' as did the Liberal Democrats in their election manifesto. Likewise the Telegraph lies in this article when it states:
"Ministers plans to look at floating Royal Mail were first disclosed by The Daily Telegraph in June."
To anyone taking an interest in 'affairs EU' this was common knowledge ever since the original EU Directive was brought into force, yet another example of the Telegraph having lied and mislead its readers. Another ommission of which both the Coalition, Conservative Home and the Telegraph are guilty is the fact that, as IanPJ on Politics reminded me in a comment on this post of mine yesterday,  "Actually, it is a requirement of the directive on postal services that they not only be sold, but that efforts should be made to sell them to cross border interests. i.e. transnational companies, thereby making it possible for the EU to gain regulatory control rather than national parliaments."

If we are supposed to be a free country and have a free press then, other than matters of national security, both government and press should present the full facts to the public and not introduce what is a form of censorship.

So much for 'transparency'! Government ministers, Conservative Home and the Telegraph should hang their heads in shame - better still they should just be hung!

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