Why the employment DG has made this unique concession to Welsh nationalism is not immediately obvious. But this is one of the intriguing minor mysteries about the operation of the European Commission's access to information processes which is revealed in a report published yesterday by the campaign group Access Info Europe [1.32MB PDF].

Access Info asked the commission's main policy DGs for their internal guidance on how to handle requests made under the regulation on public access to EU documents [120KB PDF].

They were prompted to do this by the leak earlier this year of a vademecum from the trade DG. This internal handbook advised officials to write two separate reports of meetings, a factual one which could be easily disclosed and an assessment or evaluation which could be held back without the need to redact passages from just one document.

It also warned against "recording statements which may turn out to be politically embarrassing for those who have made them". And the guide added: "Avoid making personal comments in e-mails with third parties which may be the object of disclosure... (eg don't refer to the great lunch you have had with an industry representative privately or add a PS asking if he/she would like to meet for a drink)."

The commission defended these instructions on the grounds that they "make it easier to get reports out" and "avoid having to go through blanking out" documents, although the handbook has since been rewritten.

The new Access Info survey reports on what it calls "serious problems" in how its requests were treated, outlining numerous obstacles to access and discrepancies in the procedures of other DGs.

Although most complied, the competition DG refused to supply its guidance since it had been "prepared for purely internal purposes". (Contrary to first impressions the photograph does not show the Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes looking in a bucket for her department's policy on this - in fact, this is her announcing a crackdown on price-fixing in the plastics industry at a press conference earlier this month).

And the campaign group criticises DGs who leave it unclear how members of the public should file requests, demand personal details from the requester, and make the process difficult for people who don't know English.

But as for the actual guidance obtained by the research, "the main finding was that after the shock of reading the DG trade vademecum, none of the documents released held anything particularly controversial. They were in the main part professionally written documents designed with the obvious intention of helping officials handle access to documents requests".

I've always wanted to find a way to write the headline above - now I just have.

Tell people that date and they often think you've got the century wrong, by one if not two hundred years. Everywhere else in the world, FOI is a phenomenon of the past 50 years.

This Swedish tradition of transparency has had a powerful effect on the country's culture in many ways, as for example the BBC recently reported on Parliamentary expenses. But how and why did Sweden adopt this principle so far ahead of any other state?

It arose out of a period in eighteenth-century Swedish history known as the "age of liberty", and the main mover behind the act was an MP and Finnish clergyman Anders Chydenius (at that time, Finland was part of Sweden).

But there were other determined campaigners in the period leading up to the Freedom of the Press Act, one of whom was Peter Forsskal.

A new book published today contains the first translation into English of an uncensored version of his pamphlet Thoughts on Civil Liberty, 250 years after the censored Swedish original was issued.

As the commentary in the book makes clear, the Swedish head-start on FOI was not due to greater advances towards civil rights in general. In fact, Forsskal wanted his country to catch up with others, so that Swedes would have "liberty to think and write as one has in England and Germany".

The innovative approach taken in Sweden was the way the Freedom of the Press Act paid attention to state documents, treating guaranteed access to government records as part of ensuring full and open public debate - or, as the Swedish constitution puts it:

"Every Swedish citizen shall be entitled to have free access to official documents, in order to encourage the free exchange of opinion."

The botanist Carl Linnaeus, who taught Forsskal, chose the stinging nettle as a plant to name after his former pupil. This may have reflected his personality - but freedom of information often stings too.

His writing is adversely affected by his poor eyesight, which stems from the childhood rugby injury that left him blind in one eye. But how much has it changed over the decades?

It's taken me a little time to search through the collection of documents the BBC obtained under freedom of information from Edinburgh University about the period Mr Brown was Rector there in the 1970s.

He was elected to this post while a student, and I've written before about the disputes he then had with the university authorities.

But here is an example of what his writing was like 35 years ago. This was in his early 20s, after he had sustained the rugby injury but before what may have been further deterioration in his sight.

It's neater than the letter sent to Jacqui Janes and reproduced by the Sun, and in a thinner pen than the thick felt one he now uses.

But the "i"s are not dotted, several of the characters are written unclearly or merged with their neighbours, and he spells "sincerely" wrong - one word that he did get right in his message to Mrs Janes.

And what is he saying in this letter? He's telling the university authorities that as he lacks proper secretarial help he can't submit the paper he's been working on "in a readily presentable form".

This article was based on a Home Office FOI disclosure. It's been followed up in the media elsewhere.

The shadow home secretary Chris Grayling told the House of Commons: "More and more evidence is now emerging to suggest that the government broke freedom of information laws and tried to cover up a deliberate change of policy designed to encourage much higher levels of immigration."

The government of course rejects this. But in any case the funny thing about all this is that the "evidence" is contained in documents which have been publicly available on the Home Office website for seven months.

They were published on the department's log of FOI disclosures on 9 April.

The Home Office was forced to disclose them by a ruling from the Information Commissioner [280KB PDF], which also accused the department of missing deadlines and "failure to engage with the Commissioner's investigation".

So what does this tell us? To start with, perhaps opposition politicians and journalists (yes, me included) should read the FOI disclosure logs of government departments more carefully.

But perhaps it also tells us something about the relationship between the web and the media. Documents are available on the internet for anyone interested to read for several months - yet it's only when the mainstream media focus on them that other journalists and politicians get interested.

There's an icy gale blowing through the offices of public authorities, and it's driven by freedom of information - that anyway is the view of some FOI-sceptics in officialdom.

While many others are worried about global warming, these people are concerned about the "chilling effect" - the idea that publicly disclosing internal discussions would inhibit officials from giving free and frank advice in future. But how cold really are the resulting temperatures?

These arguments are often central to assessing whether disclosing data is in the public interest or not. There's no doubt that some civil servants do genuinely agonise over this, as indicated for example by research earlier this year from University College, London [906Kb PDF].

But those who believe in a powerful chilling affect appear to have much difficulty in persuading the Information Commissioner and the Information Tribunal - not least because it would seem to imply that civil servants who respond in that way are rather unprofessional and willing to ignore the Civil Service Code.

All this is strongly illustrated by an important and interesting recent ruling [167Kb PDF] from the Information Tribunal. The case involved an FOI request from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade to the Export Credits Guarantee Department for a risk assessment relating to the Al Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Paul Radford, head of ECGD's Credit Risk Analysis Decision, told the tribunal that the impact of disclosure would not be a "chilling effect" but a "freezing effect", which he described as "catastrophic". "He did not know how the ECGD would manage, how it would conduct its affairs, how it would function to demonstrate it was doing a proper job."

This prediction of what sounded like a new ice age that would paralyse ECGD did not impress the tribunal, who dismissed his claims as "exaggerated", his language as "extravagant" and his demeanour as "dismissive".

The tribunal argued that senior civil servants would still have "sufficient courage and independence" to give robust advice, even in the face of potential public scrutiny. It then decided that ECGD should release the material involved to CAAT.

The department maintains it was right to take the case to the tribunal. Its spokesperson says: "ECGD takes its FOI responsibilities seriously, including its duty to protect information that it believes is exempt."

"Mr Radford is a very experienced economist whose contribution to the credit risk management work of ECGD remains highly valued," the spokesperson adds. "He did not intend to be dismissive. It is disappointing that the tribunal interpreted the expression of his genuinely and strongly held views in the way in which it did."

This is one of a number of freedom of information cases pursued by CAAT, which has used the FOI law extensively.

"FOI is very useful", says Ann Feltham from CAAT. "More information about how these huge arms deals are financed is now coming our way. We are definitely better informed, but it has taken a long while."

ECGD is currently considering whether it can appeal against the tribunal decision. So for the moment, we still have to wait to see whether the buildings of Whitehall are transformed into giant freezers.

In any case, always remember there are some people who prefer the cold.

If anyone is still interested, the case involves a request to the Scotland Office for material relating to the Sewel Convention, the convention that Westminster does not normally legislate on matters devolved to Scotland without the consent of the Scottish Parliament.

The Scotland Office initially turned down the request, but did release some documents during the commissioner's investigation. And the commissioner has now decided [128KB PDF] that the government was right "for the most part" to keep the rest secret.

Earlier this month the information commissioner's office disposed of another case over four years old (possibly, like buses, after a long wait several ICO decisions come along at once). This one relates to the Hawk 128 advanced jet trainer aircraft, and the commissioner has again decided [116KB PDF] in favour of the partial release of further material.

However, as the latest snapshot [166KB PDF] of the ICO's caseload indicates, the commissioner is still dealing with several other complaints that date back to 2005, most of them involving the Cabinet Office (one of which is mine).

The new Commissioner Chris Graham made some interesting remarks about the delays in his office on an episode last week of the BBC Radio 4 programme Law in Action, which assessed the state of FOI nearly five years after it came into force.

Mr Graham admitted that his office took too long to consider complaints, saying "We're not as efficient as we should be". He added that measures were in place to speed up, and that he was also telling public authorities that they had to make the FOI process more straightforward.

He described freedom of information as a cumbersome process like "a complicated stately dance with many parties", so that "it's a question of 'Will you walk a little faster?, said the whiting to the snail'".

This reference to the Lobster Quadrille in Alice in Wonderland, where the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon dance slowly and sadly round Alice while treading on her toes, may indeed capture some of the spirit of how the FOI system operates.

But if Mr Graham and his team are really seeking inspiration from a character in Alice in Wonderland, perhaps they have most to learn from the Mad Hatter.

He informs Alice that as long as you keep on good terms with Time, he'll do almost anything you want with the clock. He can make it go from nine in the morning to half-past one, time for dinner, in a twinkling. Equally well, he can "keep it to half-past one as long as you liked".

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.

It features the valedictory despatches of ambassadors, their final message home in which they were traditionally allowed to express personal and pungent viewpoints. The programmes are based on extensive enquiries both in the National Archives for the older documents and also using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain more recent ones.

The series producer Andrew Bryson explains here the mix of intriguing and amusing discoveries about ambassadorial attitudes which he made through his persistent and thorough researches.

It's a good example of how freedom of information can be used to provide detailed insights into officialdom which would otherwise be impossible until much later after the event. (Declaration of interest: I'm the executive producer of the series).

The Foreign Office co-operated by disclosing some powerfully revealing material, although it also held some documents back on the grounds of protecting international relations (these refusals included Sir Christopher Meyer's valedictory from Washington in 2003 and Sir Roderick Lyne's from Moscow in 2004).

There are now some who say that the FOI Act means that diplomats may be less frank in future in expressing their opinions. These concerns are expressed in a later episode in the series by the former Foreign Office minister, Denis MacShane.

So if these fears prove true, what kind of material might no longer be committed to paper in an overseas post and sent back to London?

Here's one outspoken example of a valedictory despatch - divulged under FOI. It's from Sir Andrew Green, now chairman of the pressure group MigrationWatch, who in 2000 ceased to be Britain's ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

But the letter above was written in 1996, when its author Alan Johnson was leader of the Communication Workers' Union and not, as he is now, home secretary in a Labour cabinet whose minister responsible for the matter has described such a strike as a "lunatic proposition".

Mr Johnson's letter was released to the BBC in the past following a freedom of information request.

And altogether 13% of FOI applications to UK government departments are filed through this site, which processes requests and automatically publishes the responses.

This is according to a statistical analysis posted on the site's blog last week. It compares the number of requests going through Whatdotheyknow to the official figures published for central government FOI applications for April-June 2009, the most recent data available from the Ministry of Justice.

I have some quibbles about this methodology. For example, some of the "requests" through Whatdotheyknow are most unlikely to be counted as actual FOI requests by the recipient department.

Nevertheless, it is clear from the broad picture that this is a remarkable achievement by Whatdotheyknow, which has been much more successful than I expected.

The growing role played by this site has happened at a time when the number of FOI applications to central government appears to be on the increase (see the 2009 data in Figure 1 and Table A in the Ministry of Justice statistics bulletin).

So one obvious question arises: How much is Whatdotheyknow boosting the total number of FOI requests, and how much is it simply providing a more convenient route for those who would ask the questions anyway?

It's clear that many people find Whatdotheyknow much easier to use than tracking down and implementing the official means provided by some public authorities.

Indeed, there are those who have described it as "too easy", apparently having to restrain themselves from "asking about various things that don't matter all that much..., remembering that there is a poor civil servant at the other end who's going to have to find the information".

But the evidence, such as it is, does not suggest to me that the growth in FOI requesting is particularly linked to the site. Looking at the individual departments, those with the biggest increases over the past year (eg Work and Pensions, Health) are not especially those which are most popular with the users of Whatdotheyknow.

Another potentially interesting analysis might be to examine whether Whatdotheyknow users receive quicker replies and more often get all they asked for than requesters whose responses are not automatically made public.

One involves the long-running case fought by Steven Sugar for access to the "Balen report", an internal analysis of the BBC's coverage of the Middle East. The other relates to financial information about certain programmes.

As I've discussed on numerous occasions before, the FOI Act only applies to the BBC "in respect of information held for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature".

This has led to much legal argument about information which is held for a variety of purposes, partly covered by this exclusion clause or "derogation" and partly not (for example, programme budgets kept both for journalistic and for financial management purposes).

Until now this legal dispute has centred mainly on the question of which is the predominant purpose for keeping the material, for that to be the criterion to determine whether or not it falls inside or outside the requirements of the FOI Act.

But Mr Justice Irwin ruled today that this "predominant purpose test" is wrong in law, and in fact information falls outside the FOI Act if it is held to any significant extent for one of the purposes mentioned in the derogation.

In the key passage of both judgements, the judge said:

"The BBC has no obligation to disclose information which they hold to any significant extent for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, whether or not the information is also held for other purposes. The words do not mean that the information is disclosable if it is held for purposes distinct from journalism, art or literature, whilst it is also held to any significant extent for those listed purposes. If the information is held for mixed purposes, including to any significant extent the purposes listed in the Schedule or one of them, then the information is not disclosable."

The judge decided that the BBC was under no obligation to divulge the information at issue (although he did add that in these cases even on the basis of the predominant purpose test he would have ruled that the BBC was within its rights not to disclose the material).

These decisions also have similar implications for other public bodies which have a derogation in the Freedom of Information Act, such as Channel 4, the Bank of England, the Competition Commission and the Traffic Commissioners.

"If there is anything else that I can do for you, which is required by law, don't hesitate to call my office. If it isn't required by law then don't bother asking, because I think that you're a worthless piece of..."

The mayor continued:

"You're a poor, lonely, jealous, old man with aspirations of being a writer. You write your lies and uneducated opinions on people and issues from behind the safety of your slobber stained keyboard with the hope that somebody will read them that doesn't know you and believe that you're more than the pitiful, broke-down, lizard-looking thing that you are, in my opinion. Get a life old man. On second thought, don't bother."

I have asked the mayor to explain, and he told me the following:

"Let me first say that I am an advocate of 'Open Record Laws' and my response to Forrey reflects that. I immediately responded to his request in a professional manner. My mistake was I should have sent my opinions of Forrey in a separate correspondence. What I'm not an advocate of is the freedom of bloggers to write lies, half-truths and slanderous insults about people (especially my family and me). This man is exactly as I described him in my e-mail, but my opinion of him had nothing to do with his request for information. I did not do this in a public forum either, it was a private e-mail."

In the jargon of the FOI world this manoeuvre - trying to prevent a public body from disclosing material - is called a "reverse-FOI". And there's been an interesting example today.

The major waste management company Veolia has just lost its legal battle to block Nottinghamshire Council from revealing data to a local environmental activist, Shlomo Dowen. The High Court has this afternoon rejected Veolia's judicial review action against the council.

Mr Dowen has been campaigning against the company's plans to build a new incinerator and is the co-ordinator of the UK Without Incineration Network. He was represented in this case by Friends of the Earth.

He wants to see the full financial details of the waste disposal contract between Veolia and the council. In the summer he had arranged to visit the council offices to inspect documents relating to financial transactions with Veolia.

He argues this is in line with the Audit Commission Act. As I've noted before, for a brief period each year this gives local electors a little-used right of access to council financial information which is well beyond that guaranteed by the Freedom of Information Act. (If you want to take advantage yourself, the best guide is provided by the Orchard News Bureau).

But Veolia then obtained an interim injunction to prevent the council showing him the material. The company argued that it contained commercially sensitive information and releasing this would damage the business in relation to its competitors.

The High Court has now dismissed the company's case. Mr Justice Cranston ruled that Mr Dowen was entitled to see the material in question, despite Veolia's contention that it would lead to a breach of commercial confidentiality. The judge said:

"The obligation to pay local taxation through the rates was matched by the right given to rate-payers to an involvement in the process of ensuring the money was well spent... In my judgement, it is entirely unsurprising that given its history the law should permit a local elector such as Mr Dowen sight of the disputed documents in this case. The historic role of interested persons such as local government electors in participating in the audit process would be severely diminished without such disclosure."

This decision has been welcomed by the Audit Commission, which monitors value for money in local government.

Veolia have not responded to my requests for their reaction.

Update, 16:00: Veolia have issued the following statement:

"We first requested a legal ruling on this issue because we wanted to give clarity to local authorities, the general public and the waste management industry. The company accepts the judgement of the court and we do not plan to appeal. We look forward to delivering the next phase of the Nottinghamshire PFI waste management and recycling contract and will continue to build on the achievements of the last three years."

The world's information commissioners are meeting in Oslo, while amongst other global happenings to mark this event later this week there's a Right to Know Fun Walk in the Cayman Islands.

The Cayman Islands is one of the half-dozen places to have adopted a freedom of information law in the past year. This has brought the number of countries or territories with such legislation to 90.

But there's a huge difference between the existence of a legal right of access to state information and many people actually making use of it. This is confirmed by a recent analysis of these 90 laws by the Dutch FOI researcher Roger Vleugels.

He shows that for around half the countries for which statistics are available, the annual number of information requests is less than one per 100,000 inhabitants.

The UK as a whole comes eighth in his league table of requests per inhabitant, and he puts Scotland with its own FOI Act, ninth. Other countries with active cultures of asking for information include Mexico, Japan and Ireland.

While noting that there are issues about the true international comparability of the figures, it still seems clear there is one state with much the highest rate of formal FOI requesting - and that is the USA.

The right to know is one thing - actually asking questions is another.

This isn't a store of information on the properties of the nation's loose change, it's the Combined Online Information System and contains the Treasury's detailed analysis of departmental spending under thousands of category headings.

Mr Osborne has promised that if he becomes chancellor he will make it public. Meanwhile the government won't give him access to it, and earlier this year Mr Osborne made a fuss about that.

I put in a freedom of information request for the database. The Treasury has now turned this down. It argues that much of the data is published anyway in aggregate form and that the database itself involves proprietary software whose disclosure would breach commercial confidentiality.

It also told me that the information in Coins could not practically be exported into another programme, because the database contains approximately 2.4 million lines of data. Shortly afterwards an official e-mailed me to say that it actually contains about 24 million lines of data.

Is it normal for Treasury estimates to be out by a factor of 10?