UK Conservatives Scrubbing Their Past Speeches From the Internet
Including promises of transparency
The Conservative Party has attempted to erase a 10-year backlog of speeches from the internet, including pledges for a new kind of transparent politics the prime minister and chancellor made when they were campaigning for election.
Prime minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne campaigned on a promise to democratise information held by those in power, so people could hold them to account. They wanted to use the internet transform politics.
But the Conservative Party has removed the archive from its public facing website, erasing records of speeches and press releases going back to the year 2000 and up until it was elected in May 2010.
It also struck the record of their past speeches off internet engines including Google, which had been a role model for Cameron and Osborne's "open source politics".
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No politician wants to be held accountable. Libertarians are some better in that regard. We will see what happens when they get real power.
But the internet is forever. People have stored those speeches and papers. They will become samizData.