The Truth Catches Up With a Closed Society
May 27, 2009
In the time between my last post on the potential for radical truth and the need for independent verification of ‘facts’ the UK’s political elite has gone into melt-down, all because they did not embrace this type of change.
In the space of a month the majority of Members of Parliament have gone from opposing the application of the Freedom of Information Act as it applies to their expenses claims to publishing their own claims on party and individual websites. Some obviously had reasons to oppose this glasnost and in time those MPs who were stretching the definitions of expenses “wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred when staying overnight away from their main UK residence (referred to below as their main home) for the purpose of performing Parliamentary duties” will pay with their credibility or their jobs, or more likely both.
What we, as a body politic, must ensure is that the execution of Gorbachev’s reforms to Russian politics is not the model that we end up following, where the openness (glasnost) and restructuring (peristroika) meant that the quick and the ruthless gained most at the expense of those who are supposed to be served by the state. There is an opportunity to change the UK’s politics for the better, but there is also the opportunity for those with loud voices to set it on a path that negates any positives that come out of this debacle.
