The Sun’s Deputy Editor James Slack must be laughing.
The Information Commissioner has dropped an investigation into how The Sun obtained CCTV footage of Matt Hancock kissing his lover Gina Colangelo at Department of Health offices.
Here is the official ICO statement.
But the fact that Police are also investigating Partygate and have fined James Slack, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak means we know that the ICO as well as the Police could have simply asked James Slack, and the Sun’s lawyers how they sourced the images.
I wouldn’t want to deter anyone from sharing this kind of information in the future, but it’s important for the public to know if the Sun paid for this information and how they got it.
Rupert Murdoch’s organisations have a lot of influence in the UK and obviously it would not be a good idea for anyone to argue with them.
But it’s important not to give everyone the impression that they are simply above the law.
That is what happened with Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, and Rishi Sunak and look where it’s got us.
James Slack’s cooling off period from leaving his post as a Government spin doctor had just ended on the day the Hancock “scoop” was published so it is obvious that he knows a lot about where the video footage was sourced.
Hancock had been Slack’s government colleague and they both worked together on imposing the lockdown regime and propaganda on the rest of us.
The Sun received a lot of money from the Government for platforming its Covid propaganda – the conflicts of interest once again are enormous.
How can we possibly learn anything as a society about how to avoid these kinds of problems in the future if the press, government, police and regulators conspire to selectively leak confidential information whenever it’s convenient and then when they don’t want to deal with the consequences simply cover it up?
I am not complaining about the hypocrisy and the corruption. I am a British citizen and I am happy to remain one. Hypocrisy and corruption are a key part of human nature. I don’t call for them to suddenly no longer exist. But neither should we be celebrating or rewarding corruption at every possible opportunity. Sadly we still do.
Corruption causes a lot of human suffering on the part of the the people who are lied to, maligned and stolen from, but also for the perpetrators who find themselves having to tell bigger lies and dig deeper holes.
We could see that with Matt Hancock, Cressida Dick and the heads of all the Government departments and regulatory bodies. They can’t tell the truth and their priority is covering it up. Of course they prefer to go after their rivals than protect the public from their friends.
None of this is shocking any more. The sheer number of cases and the lack of imagination in how they are covered up is overwhelming. Our prospects for remaining sane in the face of all this deception are approaching zero.
To steal from Ghandi, also a hypocritical & racist politician, what does it mean to be sane in an insane world?
