Fire Service Changes

The petition is entitled Remove the D notice on the press reporting on the changes to the fire service and the explanatory notes say

"The Fire Service in the UK is being changed as you read this. The press are restricted on what is allowed to be reported. Remove the D notice on reporting of this subject."

This one's making me twitch - more woolly liberalism, no doubt.

I haven't heard anything about the Fire Service being changed, and there's nothing I can find in assorted News resources. But then, if there's a DA Notice (apparently they stopped being called D notices in 1993, but it's the same thing) on reporting it, I wouldn't be able to find anything, would I?

Now, according to Wikipedia (see the above link) they are "official request[s] to news editors not to publish items on specified subjects, for reasons of national security" and there are five standing ones dictating "general guidance on what could be published and what could not, and what would require further advice from the secretary of the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee". The five standing notices are about: "Military Operations, Plans & Capabilities; Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Weapons and Equipment; Ciphers and Secure Communications; Sensitive Installations and Home Addresses and United Kingdom Security & Intelligence Special Services". Some of this is borne out on the officialDefence Advisory Notice system website.

But it's a voluntary system. There's no compulsion on editors. According to the FAQs, the phrase "slapping a D-notice on something" "is still used by people, and sounds dramatic, but it is no longer what actually happens! DA-Notices are not issued for particular incidents. The 5 standing Notices cover various eventualities, and, if necessary, the editor's’ attention is just drawn by the DA-Notice Secretary to the advice in the appropriate Notice.

So there are three possibilities here. One is that there's nothing happening with the fire service, the petitioner's a tin-foil-hat lunatic being paranoid, and in short it's nonsense. Or there's some way in which the "changing" of the Fire Service affects national security and the press is therefore not reporting anything because they voluntarily agree with the DA-notice secretary that they should stay silent. Or else there is some change being made to the Fire Service that has some other kind of reporting silence applied to it.

It's the possibility of the last option that's bothering me. And that's only because I have heard on the grape vine (reliably, mind) about some NHS staff who, having had their pay cut and conditions worsened under the NHS Agenda for Change have been banned from talking to the press and their unions about it. Which all seems like crazy talk and like I ought to be wearing the tinfoil hat and so on, but ... Thing is, the workers who've been given to understand this have knuckled down and not told the press or anyone else much because they think there's some way they can be banned from doing so. I don't think there is a chance in hell it's legal, but if they believe it, it doesn't matter whether what they've been told is legal or not, does it?

I'm hypothesising, then, that something similar could apply with this Fire Service thing. And it's bothering me. So I'm sharing the trouble with anyone daft enough to read this blog, and maybe then I'll feel better about it.