Avoiding the request
The experience of feeling you're sometimes not getting a full answer to your question is one shared by FOI requesters and political interviewers.
It may be frustrating, but are you still finding out something? Yes, in the field of interviewing, according anyway to participants in Avoiding the Question, a BBC Radio 4 documentary which I have produced for transmission this Sunday at 10.45pm.
Some say you can learn a lot about party positions and internal tensions from exactly where interviewees do and do not feel the need to equivocate. And that the different ways in which different politicians evade questions helps to form their public image.
If you've ever thought Margaret Thatcher came across as aggressive, John Major ineffectual, Tony Blair smug, David Cameron smarmy and Gordon Brown mechanical, maybe this is more to do with how they've avoided questions than actually answered them.
So similarly can you learn something from the nature of those FOI requests that public bodies (yes, even the BBC, as I expect some commenters to point out) refuse and the way in which they refuse them?
Not always - as I've previously written, just because they're behaving as if they've got something to hide, it doesn't mean they actually have. But certainly sometimes.
Perhaps some public authorities might therefore volunteer to undergo the experiment which three MPs agreed to do for Radio 4's iPM programme last week - strictly giving yes or no answers. But it's not easy - witness Norman Baker and his vegetarian sausages.
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Last night's Question Time was a completely wasted opportunity. We never miss this programme and were looking forward to hearing more about the BNP policies. BBC's normal impartiality was missing - very disappointed with the chairmanship of David Dimbleby, he is normally completely politically-neutral. The audience were not representative of the UK we know - where were the blue collar thirty year olds, the middle aged middle-class middle England ? To have an American lecturing us on Englishness was a total farce - she was an irritating irrelevance. Jack Straw was ineffectual, simply rambling on about vague theories - and Dimbleby allowed him to finish every sentence - while allowing the other panelists to interrupt and harangue Nick Griffin. The only one talking any sense was the baroness - Chris Huhne was predictable and very, very rude, not allowing Nick Griffin to finish his point. Had Griffin been allowed more time, he could well have demolished any support - the BBC have simply raised his profile by showing him as a victim, who was not given a fair chance to explain his party's policy. Shameful - and certainly not David Dimbleby's finest show.
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Can we get an FOI on the decision regarding the time slot for your show?
Any question that cannot be answered in a way that can be refuted at a later date is avoided. Try asking the elected when they were first warned about the impending financial crisis? Those will be interesting answers. Maybe just a card with month and year. People who live in the world of illusion are often flustered when confronted with questions regarding reality. When all the economic indicators continue downward and the interpretation is "Recovery" has begun, you just have to wonder.
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