Latest Kindle Read

My latest Kindle read is 'The Silent State' by Heather Brook.  

Heather Brooke is an award-winning investigative journalist whose research into MPs dominated the headlines in 2009. Facing numerous political obstacles, Brooke, using the Freedom of Information Act, tenaciously pieced together the accounts of receipts and credit slips detailing MPs' claims for "additional costs allowances" from soft furnishings to the infamous floating duck island that cost many of them their jobs and which has transformed the parties' election agendas.

Let's end the UK's culture of secrecy' The journalist and freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke wants us all to use technology to challenge the powerful. In 'The Silent State' Heather Brook investigates the myth behind secrets, democracy and British Democracy. 

Revealing that the recent MPs’ expenses scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg, Heather Brooke exposes the shocking and often farcical lack of transparency at all levels of government. At a time when the State knows more than ever about us, Brooke argues that without proper access to the information that citizens pay for, Britain can never be a true democracy.

Secrecy: anonymous bureaucrats, clandestine courts, men in tights and the true cost of ‘public’ information. 

Propaganda: spin, PR and bullshitting by numbers. The British government spent GBP38m more on advertising last year than their closest competitor, Proctor and Gamble – find out what they spent it on!

Surveillance: discover the extent of Britain’s network of databases spying on ordinary citizens.

Expenses: read, for the first time, the exclusive and definitive account of Brooke’s five-year campaign to have MPs’ expenses revealed, which rocked the nation and transformed Britain’s political landscape.