Prince Charles, Secrecy, and the British Government
The Black Spider Memos – Published on Dissident Voice, by Binoy Kampmark, April 10, 2015.
Over this month, British officials, with enormous reluctance, will relinquish the contents of 27 letters by Prince Charles to the press termed the “black spider memos” spanning the period between September 2004 and April 2005. A better view into the idiosyncratic views of the prolific letter writing prince might be offered, though it is unlikely to be spectacular. The Royals, notably the British ones, have tended to be fairly open about their antediluvian prancing in a world that has somehow left them behind.
But that was not the point of the Guardian newspaper’s ten year challenge, which yielded rewards last month with a 5 to 2 Supreme Court ruling rejecting the attempt by former Attorney-General Dominic Grieve to veto publication. The veto had been directed against the decision of the freedom of information tribunal which rejected Grieve’s efforts to keep the lid on the correspondence.
In 2012, Grieve argued that the correspondence contained the “most deeply held personal views and beliefs” that effectively constituted his training to be a monarch. The tribunal found, however, that it was “in the overall public interest for there to be transparency as to how and when Prince Charles seeks to influence government.”
The rather vague constitutional justifications for secrecy again demonstrate how woolly logic has a habit of finding its ways into the highest departments of supposed constitutional democracy. Should the public be interested in what the Prince and future heir to the throne is considering in letters to the ministers of the crown? Perhaps less than the efforts of government to suppress the contents of such correspondence … //
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(Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and can be reached at: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy).
Links:
Sanctions against Russia a counterproductive American game [VIDEO], on Russia Today RT, April 11, 2015;
A military intervention won’t work, so starve ISIS of all resources, on Intrepid Report, by Joseph M. Cachia, April 9, 2015 (my comment: why it is not already done? – Heidi);
The People Pay, Corporations Cash In: Problems Plague EU Medical Research Initiative, on Spiegel Online International, by , April 1, 2015: The EU spends billions in subsidies on pharmaceutical research, with funds going to the Innovative Medicines Initiative, an alliance of corporations and universities with the aim of developing new drugs. Its record has been disastrous;
Podemos: The People’s Hopes and Adaptation to the Regime, on RedMed, by Pedro Marlez, March 24, 2015;
Buch von Arno Gruen: wider den Gehorsam, bei amazon.