"Hundreds of thousands of secret Whitehall files are being shredded before the public gains the right to see them under the Freedom of Information Act on 1 January." [The Independent]

Part of me really wants to believe our bum government is doing this.

"Civil servants have drastically stepped up the shredding of official documents, figures compiled by the Tories suggest.

Some government departments had doubled the number of documents being shredded ahead of the Freedom of Information Act's implementation on 1 January." [BBC]

But I heard the Freedom of Information commissioner being interviewed and he seems convinced that there is no malice involved. I suppose we'll find out when something blows up and the records have been disappeared. He did make a good point that it is difficult to completely erase electronic records, especially email, due to the trail of server logs that are routinely kept. This is not the case with paper documents so all we can really say is that the jury is out. One to watch.

10:09:04 PM