UK citizens: today is your last chance to sign this petition:
A UK company is currently placing online colonial records of 3.000.000 Africans, relating to their enslavement. This is a corporate attempt to cash in on the increased interest during the bicentenary year. African people and descendants of slaves should not have to pay for such a service. This should be a free to view document, with all records being made public so the history can be known by all. Please sign this petition to get all govenment records made available free of charge to everyone.
Done, although those No 10 petitions are largely a PR widget I think. But on the general point, various public records are being put behind pay walls which is very nasty privatisation of information which of course then allows for horrible companies to emerge charging (careful not to say too loud how much cheaper it is to go direct to the civil service and cut out the entrepreneurial middle man/woman)to help people get access to public records. For such a principle to be used on records of a shameful past crime smacks of a subtle sort of cover up.
Couldn’t agree more.