Information is Never Free

It looks like we will finally found out whether it was the London government or the BBC who was really sexing up as we went to the war with Iraq.

The Information Tribunal has ruled that an early draft of the infamous "dodgy dossier" has to be released. The government has refused to do so since the early days of this mess, now it's time for the world to see. Or maybe not, the government are bound to appeal to the High Court, then the Court of Appeal, then the House of Lords.

Even if the dossier is released, we still won't get the full story. Two people wrote notes on the dossier, we can assume one is Foreign Office press chief John Williams (the dossier's author). Whoever the other writer is can sleep safely, the tribunal have decided that his comments must be wiped off before the dossier is released.

A quick look into the granted/refusal statitics tell their own story:

During the third quater of 2007, of all requests which could be answered (i.e. not impossible questions or ones too complicated) 42% were refused.

How were we ever so naive to think that Freedom of Information actually meant information beign freed?