--- James Heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> wrote: >
> Sarah Tisdall, I
> recall, was
> jailed for alerting CND to the siting of American Cruise
> Missiles on
> British soil on the grounds of breach of her contract (having
> been
> required to sign the official secrets act).
As a signatory of that Act in my previous life, I think you might have it a bit back to front here. If you sign the OSA and break it, then what you've broken is the OSA, and you can be prosecuted for that alone. The OSA isn't part of your contract of employment; it's part of the law that binds you, and signing it is just a way of making sure it can be proved that you realise that there is such an Act.
When I worked at the Bank of England, we also, as well as the OSA, had to sign a further and stricter declaration of secrecy, which would have come under the general heading of employment law.
It's true that the EU is ludicrously too secretive, and so is the UK government. But the Connolly case is not comparable to the Tomlinson, Wright or any of the other British cases, as the Commission was not attempting to supress or ban the book itself. All they were saying was that Connolly could not simultaneously publicly denounce the Commission and draw a paycheck from it -- and frankly, I can't think of a single employer who *would* allow this, particularly given that Connolly worked in a division whose entire raison d'etre was to promote EMU. Unlike yourself, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has never really impinged on my consciousness other than by annoying me in the Telegraph, so I've no opinion one way or the other on the man himself. But I do think that the Telegraph has gone down another notch in my estimation by twisting the facts so blatantly. Connolly makes a very poor poster-child for the case against EU secrecy for anyone who isn't also attracted by his rabid views on the single currency.
dd
>
===== "Never trust a man who doesn't drink Though he's less likely to throw up in your sink For I'd rather be half plastered Than a blue-nosed wowser bastard So never trust a man who doesn't drink" -- Barry Humphries
____________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie