Free speech to be curtailed under the guise of ...

... well, under the guise of preventing ex-Whitehall staff from making money by publishing their memoirs as "Government insiders".

Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, and other civil servants like him, must really grow up and not take the British public for idiots (or at least not all of us poor suckers)! Confidentiality is one thing, and the Official Secrets Act etc is in place for this purpose, but seeking to put in place measures to prevent people (sometimes called 'whistle-blowers') from letting us know the sordid things that are being done in our name by elected politicians and some of their, in theory, impartial civil servants is quite another!

This kind of nonsense makes me so angry! Frankly, if people want to write about some of the less-savoury things that go in government departments (or in private companies, for that matter), sometimes bordering on illegality, and some other people are prepared to pay money for what they write, then it seems a fair exchange to me. Or are we to be turned into some kind of socialist collective under the 'Great Leader' Tony 'Kim il-Sung' Blair where freedom of speech is severely curtailed. The solution to render the memoirs of people like Lance Price unworthy of publishers bothering to print them is for government and some civil servants to stop doing things that are questionnable legally and/or morally!