MI5’s current list of active secret agents

Hands up all those who know what The Gazette is, and how to access it?

I ask because Governor Honan claims that it is “open and transparent” if an announcement is published in it (Letters, today’s Sentinel). 

I must disagree. 

Nobody reads the Gazette.  Most people have never heard of it and very few know how to get a copy (you have to find it on the notoriously impenetrable SHG website, but to find it you first have to know it exists and it’s there).

Something put in the Gazette can hardly be said to have been ‘published’, and certainly not either openly or transparently.  A letter in both newspapers counts as published (it has to be both because many people only read one).  Or an announcement on the radio (again, both stations), run for at least three days because people sometimes miss one night.  If you want people to know something you publish it where people will see or hear it. 

In my opinion, claiming something to have been “openly and transparently published” because it was in the Gazette is like the Vogons (in “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) saying their plans to destroy Earth had been “on display in the local planning office in Alpha Centuri for 50 Earth years”.  About as open and transparent as MI5’s current list of active secret agents.