A day in the life of a Middle Manager...

A shameful day for parliament

If you're in the UK you'll probably know that MP's voted last week (Friday 18 May) on a Private Members Bill to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Act.

Normally, Private Members Bills don't stand much of a chance of getting anywhere near becoming law. However, this one appears to be different as MPs are obviously sick of being asked to justify expenses etc.

If this does manage to get onto the books (and our coronated Prime Minister Elect is on record as saying that he won't block the bill) then this means that no more FOI requests will be honoured by parliament.

This is a shameful day for the 96 MPs who voted for the bill and the rest of the MPs who either couldn't be bothered to show up for the reading or just didn't vote.

Luckily the bill still has to get through the House of Lords (who apparently, although they are unelected, seem to speak more clearly for the people of the country than the government at the moment). I don't hold out much hope though as the government, while officially neutral on this, is broadly in favour and is showing this by providing the parliamentary time for this bill to be 'debated'.

If you agree that this is a shameful day for UK politics you can sign the Disclosure Petition on the Number 10 website. It may not do any good (after all, the vehicle tracking one didn't and that had over a million signatories) but it certainly made me feel better.

If you feel particularly strongly then lobby your MP, especially if they are one of the 96 who voted for the bill to pass into law and exempt themselves from a law every company / public body etc. etc. has to comply with.

I mean, where next? A vote to exempt themselves from speeding tickets? A vote to exempt themselves from any other law they think is OK for the proles but not for them? A vote to give themselves a gold-plated pension and massive pay increase? (Oh sorry, that last one is almost certain to happen).

I am thoroughly disgusted and disillusioned with politics in this country - I suspect it's not really any better in any of the major western democracies though? I can't really remember a time in which we were expected to just bend over and take it quite as roughly as the MPs seem to want to give it to us at the moment...