Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
The UK Foreign Office redacted an affectionate sign-off in messages from David Cameron to Boris Johnson before it was forced to comply fully with a Freedom of Information request.
When it released text discussions between Cameron (then foreign secretary) and Johnson (then prime minister) the department redacted a single word under the section 40 exemption relating to personal information.
Journalist George Greenwood successfully appealed and after two months the offending word was duly revealed: love.
On one level this is amusing, not least in light of the Leveson inquiry revelation that Cameron thought – not alone or unreasonably – that LOL stood for “lots of love”.
But there’s also a serious side: the scale and frequency of rejections for entirely legitimate FOI requests.
