How Dare They?

This government is utterly without any sense of shame or propriety. How do they dare to use our money purely to further their own ends, against our interest?

Today in the Times Martin Sixsmith writes about his three-year quest to find out what actually happened when he, as a civil servant, was attacked and driven out by the lies and smears of the Labour Party trying to blame their own sins on Mr Sixsmith. Members of the government ignored the rules they themselves made, ignored the commission they had set up, harassed their own appointed chairman into breaking the procedures they had set up and considered criminal acts against laws they had made. They also spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of our money to try and avoid their misdeeds being detailed in public.

Labour are so arrogant and self-righteous that they probably fail to see how utterly wrong this is. Since 1997 the Labour Party has been utterly corrupting the whole apparatus of government in order to run and promote the Labour Party. They are like a Communist Party, thinking that the Party is the country, Party interests are national interests. They disgust me.

An Open Letter to the Times

For fuck's sake, you have no clue. You have thrown away everything that makes you a serious newspaper, everything you once stood for, every claim to uphold the public good and the historic values of the news media, for one cheap headline in a small story that will mean little enough to your readers now, and nothing in a month's time. For that you threaten to ruin the life of the Nightjack, and consigned his award-winning blog to history. On net your story destroyed news. Far more has been deleted from the internet, from the sum of what we can read, than you have added. You have completely reversed your purpose, become the anti-newspaper.

The Times went through an entire court process and not once did anyone think. Not once did anyone consider the effect on this man's life and career, the response he might make and the damage you might do and compare it with the utterly trivial public benefit of releasing his name.

I cannot think of words to express how stupid, how unbelievably crass and how clueless this decision has been. How can the Times ever again defend an editorial decision? How can you quote an off-the record source? How can you keep quiet about your whistle-blower?

There is a proud history in newspapers of journalists going to court, even being imprisoned, to protect an anonymous source. The Times is the first newspaper I have seen to go to court to expose an anonymous source.

[Small correction made to grammar]