The Price of Freedom of Information
After spending over £100,000 and losing his appeal the Speaker is going to finally hand over the 14 MPs expenses to Heather Brooke tomorrow at 4pm. She will then be chauffeur driven to Wapping, where the Sunday Times will pore over the expenses of 14 leading politicians going back three years.
They have bought from Heather exclusive rights - the Sunday Telegraph is only getting the details of the two MPs it FoI'd and the rest of the media is being carved out completely. The Speaker is desperately keen to smother the story in the post Crewe and Nantwich media wake. The other papers are up in arms that the normal practice with FoIs is not being followed - once the applicant has been given the information it is normally freely available. The Sunday Times has effectively bought up an FoI with the connivance of the Speaker.Guido doesn't blame Heather - she along with her co-litigant Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas have got their hands on the one and only copy of the material - she wants to look at it herself first before throwing it open - which she plans to do on Sunday. The Speaker is not following normal practice - it is not his job to give exclusives out.
Heather told Guido that
I get the bulk as I asked for 10 over several years. Initially I asked for all 646 MPs but the Commons authorities said that would cost too much so I was forced to narrow it down. Funny how they had no money to compile the expenses but plenty to go to Court to stop them being made public!
As is always the case, the money I get for my articles goes back into my campaigning. Unlike the Speaker, I don't have unlimited taxpayer funds on which to draw so this is how I make my living. It's certainly not a profitable venture I can assure you (3 1/2 years for one story is not a good business model) but worth doing I think.
The receipts will number in the thousands. The sooner Heather gets them online - the faster we will be all able to hold our pigging politicians to account...
The Speaker is now hiring a dedicated Legal Counsel for £100,000, plus bonus and package. Heather financed her legal fight herself, the political class uses taxpayers' money to fight against the public interest. Trebles all round for them and you pay...
The Speaker is now hiring a dedicated Legal Counsel for £100,000, plus bonus and package. Heather financed her legal fight herself, the political class uses taxpayers' money to fight against the public interest. Trebles all round for them and you pay...
53 comments:
i thought under FOI law the second it is released to one person it is released to everyone in the public domain. Heather has no claim to an exclusive and the speakers office should have to make it available to everyone at the same time.
You MP's and MP's staff reading this who are fiddling your expenses - you are fucking SCUM - do you understand?!
You are like human fucking tapeworms.
Perhaps the Speaker would like to follow this up by granting Hello!! exclusive rights to cover the State Opening of Parliament...
Heather may, as you say, have financed her legal fight herself, but her "co-litigant" works for the Sunday Times....I think we can work it out. So not so much campaigning for openness as paying for an exclusive. That's chequebook journalism. I thought "freedom campaigners" like Heather would disapprove of that. But perhaps she works for the Sunday Times too?
She could rifle through my invoices any time !
Phwooaaar!
Can tapeworms fuck humans?
Can't you just serve the Sunday Times with FoI request...?
It's already been decided that the information should be released to the public, so I can't see how they could fight it.
Odd isn't it, how the Speaker is now in the habit of intervening to save the executive's bacon in legal actions?(See the Information Commissioner vs the DWP on the entitlement card stuff.)
Anyone know what Mr Speaker's history as a litigant was before Mick started taking it with his venerable office?
Needs a Tottywatch tag, Mr F!
The Mail on Sunday and everybody else should make an FOI request (not to the Sunday Times) and get the information today.
Got to say she's got a nice pair of paps, even if she is milking the FOI act.
Looks like a whole new cottage industry could be set up putting in FOI requests.
Amazing what you can get away with, sporting a pair of paps like that.
Oh fer God's sake she has fought for years to show this stuff the let he have her exclusive and make some money be happy we have the info don't pisson her parade we will know it all after the weekend. Good point anon 12:19beats looking at pics of that raddled cow in Crewe any day of the week.
well im glad it is the times, the only paper that gives a shit about democracy and fair reporting.
the Times are number one.
the rest are but corrupt propaganda sheets for their political masters.
if you read any other paper you are supporting fascism and media control.
O/T - but remember those Inland revenue missing discs - some poor low grade civil servants got the high jump just for following NAO instructions (and as any civil servant will tell you, the NAO must be obeyed!!!).
Well - I am well informed that the NAO has just, in error, revealed the names and email addressess of the top 500 pfi/ppp experts in the country (both from public and private sectors) by using the cc field instead of the bcc field on a conference advert mail out!
So I think we can see where the real data protection weakness was!
You want to follow this up just ask emma snell at NAO
.....Funny how they had no money to compile the expenses but plenty to go to Court to stop them being made public!.....
Indeed, this is worth following up on Guido, how much would it have cost to publish all of them, set against say 100k or say, 2.7Bn of 10p tax balls up bribe or say, the Northern Rock bail out? Umm....
Gosh. For a second there, I thought you meant Heather Brooke.
Now THAT would have been a news story...
Can't we just hang Martin from a lamp-post, as part of the post - C & N celebrations?
I'm interested to know if all those harping on about her giving it as an Exclusive to the Sunday Times would be so keen to cough up for her Legal Bill if she had lost.
I took the local authority to court for an injunction to prevent Postal Votes being used as the Government and the Labour Party know they are
easy to used in electoral fraud (lost the case for obvious political reasons e.g every Council would have had to follow suit and ban them), my money, no-one elses.
The democracy we are supposed to have is complete nonsense and the only way to get redress against it is through expensive legal channels , so some of us do put our money where our mouth is (on less than £20,000 a year its quite difficult but then someone has to do it).
While not everyone has the tenacity to spend years fighting one cause or is prepared to stand up in court and say "this is wrong" everyone can play their part in fighting the abuse of Democracy...instead of complaining about who gets to see it first be thankful that someone kept at it against the odds to let it be known.
can I submit a FOI request to ask if she's selling those puppies? If so, I'll take the ones with the pink noses...
stalin's gran said...
Can tapeworms fuck humans?
May 22, 2008 12:20 PM
of course have you not seen the Labour party and the political class, do you live in a drain?
Hats off to Heather, who I think's easily earned the right to keep it exclusive in the first instance.
It'll be public knowledge once it's published anyway so there's no real problem there; just a case of who gets the initial scoop and I think she's more than earned that.
I hope Mr Martin's penis falls off, the evil corrupt self-serving wanker.
Hey - lay off my paps! ;)
The fact is there is one boxload of papers and so if I hand them out to everyone I don't get a look-in myself, which I think is only fair.
Also - I make plenty of info widely available (see 'secret squirrel' on www.yrtk.org) but there should be some incentive for the person who has gone to all the effort of prising information from the cold, dead hand of government. If the government followed its usual pattern of simultaneous publication then no journalists would bother making FOI requests. In fact, most don't for precisely this reason and no one is served when journalists stop investigating.
It will take me at least a day to read the papers, scan them in and upload them onto a website. Hardly much of a delay considering the 3 1/2 years I've waited.
Heather's a heroine of mine.
I'd fuck her.
Has anyone noticed that amid all the recent fuss about MP's expenses one sanctimonious voice has been missing? That of Martin 'whiter than white' Bell? Strange that. Would have thought he'd have been the first one saying how awful the situation was.
An uncensored Google image search of her name reveals her (or possibly her namesake's) more fun side. It seems she has a more lucrative profession on the side...
Does Gorbals Wanker have some obsession with spending other people's money. This cunt really has to be stopped and stopped now.
Surely the Govt could have 'Borrowed' the Money, IE taxed us for it and passed the Interest to the International Bankers, which ultimately is how Govt Borrowing works.
When McTwats expenses were nearly released a couple of months ago amongst others and the release then quickly stopped by Gorbals Mick's legal action....I seem to recall the spin on the Today programme that morning was that McTwats expenses contained a "Human mistake" and that there was nothing dodgy about them "honest". They will make an interesting read when released (assuming the haven't been shredded unfortunately like Mr. Blair's
O/T but isn't shredding material subject to an FOI request a criminal office ?
Not noticed the prosecution yet (and I won't hold my breath)!
I wish it were normal practice for public authorities to publish responses to FOI requests publically on the web!
But it isn't, they normally just send it to the requestor.
The exclusive is only short - I'm sure Heather wil distribute the documents on Sunday after the paper gets its sales boost. And if she didn't, you can always request it again.
Meanwhile - Guido, if you're so keen on making FOI requests in public, how about using WhatDoTheyKnow, mySociety's new site to help people make Freedom of Information requests.
There's some juicy stuff on there.
Do you know the buggers are off again today for 10 days for their Whitsun recess. They've only been back a month since their Easter recess. What a cushy number -it's like a glorifried public school. Do they have tuck boxes?
Recess
Christmas
18 December 2007
7 January 2008
Half Term
7 February 2008
18 February 2008
Easter
3 April 2008
21 April 2008
Whitsun
22 May 2008
2 June 2008
Summer
22 July 2008
6 October 2008
er, yes, and, no
Totty Watch seconded
Leave it out! I have never fiddled expenses, or robbed the taxpayer. I must strongly object to being compared to the greedy parasite class that infests Westminster.
This ludicrous situation, where FOI requests aren't freely available (and in fact still subject to copyright) was highlighted by good ol' Chris Lightfoot here:
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20060712-information_wants_to_be_free_but_the_foreign_office_doesnt.html where an ex-diplomat was threatened by the foreign office for putting up info from a FOI request.
It was probably the impetuous for www.whatdotheyknow.com where FOI requests are laid bare to try and circumvent this daftness. (Which people should use more).
hmmm... first of all Heather was becoming a hero of mine, but now I'm starting to think she's a bit of a spastic. let's be honest, integrity-wise, the times is a piece of shit.
note to heather: stop fucking about. your whole legal argument was the public interest angle, because the expenses in question were public funds. as that remains the case, stop being such a spastic heather, and get those fucking receipts on-line pronto.
don't exploit the taxpayers like the MPs do, for fucks sake!
bollocks to the times. they're a bunch of cunts.
Heather, You are absolutely scrummy and get my vote for 'Babe of the Year'..
But you're not just a pretty face and deserve a medal [or at least your own TV series] for doing this.
Well done, my girl !!
What is the world coming to - not a single pun on the word "porking", and nobody said "I'd like to get my hands on her figure" etc - Tory bloggers are sooo PC - they must be electable again.
‘Can tapeworms fuck humans?’
This question as been asked for many years, but only in the last decade has the question been answered. Yes it is true, tapeworms can fuck humans, but the worm must be Scottish and overweight, while the human must be a British tax payer. If those conditions are met a lot of fucking can be achieved.
Makes my day to see that fat fucker Gorbals Mick forced to bite the bullet.
Wonder how long more he'll last? He has really degraded the position of Speaker. Oh well, that's Socialist scum for you.
I think this is a good idea - if someone has put time & money into this, they should get first bite.
It is common when doing scientific research with publicly owned equipment (big colliders, Hubble telescope) for the scientist(s) who designed the experiments to get the data on a confidential basis for a period of time, allowing them priority in publication etc. After a fixed date it is released to everyone.
Heather Brooke said.
Hey - lay off my paps!
That is easier said than done :)
Well done Heather you really do deserve a medal for your efforts in exposing Westminster expense accounts.
Your tits do too, if only as innocent bystanders. :)
Ooh, I say..Ding Dong !
That girl's got nice tits! Rock and bloody roll!
Not sure you've got the right story there about the Speaker hiring dedicated Counsel. That, on its own, is no big deal - the Speaker always has a lawyer. The question is why is the current Counsel leaving now?
And the fact that Heather is selling this story to the Sunday Times shows exactly why the Commons was right to refuse her original request for all the details of all the MPs. That would have taken ages to compile, and the tax-payers would have subsidised her cheque from Murdoch.
Next stop - let's rid ourselves of the Speaker.
Don't suppose Jonathan is any relation to Ungoed-Thomas & King, solicitors in Carmarthen?
anonospastic 9.03,
you sound like a fucking moron.
this was about the public interest, not a formula for a new type of toothpaste you cunt.
In the first trance of revelations, the one that sticks out the most is related to Alan and Ann Keen. This pair of chancers represent constituencies in West London. So why on earth do they need a TAX PAYER funded flat in central London, the address of which has been redacted?
I wouldn't be surprised if their PARASITE PAD is further away from Westminster than either Brentford or Feltham, hence the enhanced secrecy...
colin,
in answer to your question;
alan and ann keen are a pair of thieves.
All these expenses can in future go into the newly installed SAP system in Whitehall...... after they understand these german error messages that keep appearing.
SAP will be another huge omney drain, but at least it'll provide a decent audit trail.
Splendid tits!
As a single parent of 3 working full time and struggling to make ends meet because I am being robbed blind by this government, all of this makes my blood pressure go 'off the scale'. They are parasites. Well done Heather and the Sunday Times.
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