newspeak

Glenn Moody reports on the latest moves by the UK government to limit the public’s access (and thus actionable use) of information that directly affects them. The piece is short and to the point and summarises what The Guardian’s excellent Ian Sample reported Friday (http://goo.gl/03oyy8).

The government is not explicitly suppressing; it is doing the modern bureaucratic equivalent, delaying (often coupled with de-funding). Thus, as The Guardian has it:

Under the new code, scientists and engineers employed at government expense must get ministerial approval before they can talk to the media about any of their research, whether it involves GM crops, flu vaccines, the impact of pesticides on bees, or the famously obscure Higgs boson.

The driver for this bureaucratic chilling is global warming, or more precisely, the fossil-fuel businesses affected by shifting investment and government largesse away from them and toward renewables and other Green Energy enterprises and their logistical implications. This is a vast and complex economy, and if we include the social and governmental apparatuses implied, it’s a veritable civilisation. But it’s also a very recent one.

Following Canada’s Bad Example, Now UK Wants To Muzzle Scientists And Their Inconvenient Truths | Techdirt.