Brown's demand for expenses information
Apologies for the break (and thanks to those of you who noticed and complained!), but I'm now back to work on freedom of information and Open Secrets.
I should mention two other interesting FOI blogs that have started in the meantime.
Panopticon is about information law and is mainly written by Timothy Pitt-Payne and Anya Proops, two barristers who have successfully built up a specialism in FOI and related cases.
FOI News is run by the journalist Matthew Davis, who's also made FOI into a successful specialism. If you've been following newspaper stories based on revelations under FOI over the past few years, you will probably have been reading his work - but because he was from an agency selling the stories to the papers you wouldn't have seen his byline. Now you can.
Meanwhile as the House of Commons expenses saga continues, I've remembered a document I obtained under FOI some time back, which seems to demonstrate Gordon Brown's determination to obtain information about expenses and allowances to ensure public finances are seen to be properly managed.
It's from 1975 when he had been elected as a student to the post of Rector of Edinburgh University and engaged in a series of battles with the univerity authorities.
In one of these he demanded information on the cost of renovations to the homes of staff which had been carried out by the university's works department. And he wanted "a full list of expenses and entertainment allowances paid to members of the University administration".
All this was requested on the grounds that "in this time of economy I believe it is vital that the University's finances must not obly be properly managed but be seen to be so".
The details he sought included the cost of plumbing work but it's not known whether this extended to the price of a bathplug.
Incidentally looking back now at the piece I wrote before Mr Brown became prime minister about the material I'd got under FOI from Edinburgh University about his rectorship, I see that none of the propositions I raised about his possible premiership seem to have come true - yet, anyway.
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Welcome back!
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Welcome back, Martin....
~Dennis Junior~
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Mr Brown the busted flush, whenever the going gets tough our courageous leader goes......into hiding, this time to his Scottish home.
Now would be a great time for the BBC to start sending in FOI requests to find who in the House of Commons payed for Derek Drapers Labourlist, and who knew what about the disgusting smear campaign that originated from our very own Moral Compasses handpicked team of spinmeisters.
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So whats new?, MP's have been milking the system they set up for donkey's years especialy the New Labour lot who have it down to a fine art. What most folk fail to understand is that becoming an MP is just another step in a political career often begining at university, students unions and the like. These people choose politics not because they have any overwhelming convictions about changing the world for the better, of course not, their main aim is to change their own lives for the better. Local government is exactly the same, we hear of councilors jumping in and out of taxis and jaunting off to sunny places on "fact finding" missions etc., all at our expense. The MP's who have said they were only operating within the rules suggests to me that they knew what they were doing was moraly wrong but did it anyway, the age old defense of the weak and corrupt. The truly sad and despicable thing about this entire expenses debacle, is the fact that the poorest in our country actualy voted these con artists into Parliament in the belief they were going to help improve their lot in life. How many hopes and aspirations of honest decent people have those greedy politicians ground into dust?, and yet they bluster on adding insult to injury trying to justify their plundering of the puplic purse. Such a parcel of rogues and thieves would be hard to find anywhere other than our Parliament.
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