Archive for January, 2008

…And we’re back. FoI watch #2, for your viewing pleasure:

‘Dodgy dossier’ draft one released: The Information Tribunal has ruled the foreign office should reveal an early draft of the dossier which took us to war with Iraq - three years after the original response. One to watch - Chris Ames has still not seen the document, and if the FO take it to the high court, we could have at least a few more months to wait

Department of Health failing to comply with FoI: The HSJ is having no joy getting the DoH to comply with their FOI requests. This comes as no shock - calling them for advice on drafting an FoI was like pulling teeth. They insisted on filtering my request through a (helpful) receptionist, rather than speaking to me direct. And concluded I’d “just have to make the request” to find out if they held any such documents. So much for duty to provide assistance, eh?

BBC avoids releasing Israel report: The Court of Appeal has upheld the Information Commissioner’s decision that he cannot rule on the BBC’s refusal to release its report into its Israel/Palestine coverage. The BBC can refuse to release any documents relating to its journalism - and the ICO has ruled it cannot decide what constitutes journalism. Cast-iron get out clause, there.

42 per cent of ‘answerable’ requests refused: If anyone knows the source of this statistic, I’d love to see it.

ICO orders release of MPs spending information: Good step forwards here. There’s also a Information Tribunal hearing coming up (7 Feb) on MPs expenses - brought by Heather Brooke.

Cabinet office google me: Yes, this is a gratuitous extra link to my Cif piece. Moving swiftly on…

And finally….the truth is out there: The UK’s UFO files have been opened - and are deathly dull. Unless the Government’s suppressed the real ones, of course. That would explain it alright. Couldn’t be that there just haven’t been any UFOs. Course not. That’d just be silly.

Quaequam (great blog, awful name) proposes an interesting test for the London Mayoral race - “Pick a candidate and try and imagine what they would be like handling a crisis such as 7/7″. Harsh but fair test, but it does hurt Boris’s fun/earthy chap image.

Ah, to be a teacher. If you believe the adverts - and why wouldn’t you? - the job involves answering thoughtful questions from fresh-faced ethnically diverse youngsters. What could be more satisfying than that? The bright young things have some great questions, too:
“Why is the sky blue?”
“What are going to do when the oil runs out?”
“Can you cry underwater?”
“If the universe is always expanding, then where is it expanding in to?”
“Is plastic surgery right or wrong?”
“Why do we dream?”

So far so good. Then we hear the questions of the two northern children. After all, it wouldn’t be a genuinely racially diverse crowd without at least some northerners. Though they did forget the token Welsh kid. No scots - Scottish teachers are hired separately. Anyway, the northern kids insightful contributions were, verbatim:

“How they make sweets”
“What’s the difference between fluff and dust?”

Oh dear. Y’know, some northerns aren’t honest and forthright salt-of-the-earth types. It’s been known for some of us to wonder about abstract concepts, even. In moderation, of course. We even have hot water, indoor toilets and even some cities, these days. Some of us don’t own farms, work down t’pit or even in t’mill. Or so I hear - I have relocated to London, after all.

Still, it’s reassuring to see that as the old prejudices get weaker - if not vanish entirely in some cases - the classic north/south divide is as wide as ever. Or at least some of us are still touchy about it.

I was going to link to the advert online, but no-one liked it enough to put it on YouTube and the TDA clearly aren’t all that web-savvy. Get with the times, guys!

What the hell is Jacqui Smith doing as Home Secretary? Not content with letting the country know she didn’t feel safe walking the streets at night - and that “people didn’t really do that kind of thing”, Dizzy reports she said on yesterday’s ‘Today’ programme that it’s Government advice not to walk alone after midnight. Good grief. For a Labour - once the party of the working classes - Home Secretary to be so utterly out of touch is offensive to the electorate

The new bond film shall be “Quantum of Solace”. Ugh. Another case of shoving the word “quantum” into a phrase to make it sound edgy and scientific. Naturally, it’s complete drivel. I confidently expect physicists everywhere to be, well, slightly pissed off…

Peter Hain has finally, finally, gone - why he humiliated himself by delaying the inevitable so long is anyone’s guess. More interesting is James Purnell’s move to the DWP from Culture, Media and Sport. Purnell was loudly and publicly advocating “top-slicing” (giving the BBC’s rivals a share) the BBC’s license fee. Stephen Carter, Brown’s communications man (and ex Ofcom boss) is apparently an advocate of the idea too.

So Purnell’s departure from the DCMS hotseat might just buy the beeb some space to breath - depending, of course, who takes his place.

5pm update
It’s Andy Burnham, who was Chris Smith’s special adviser at the DCMS before he became an MP. Chris Smith, now Lord Smith, last year criticised the BBC’s license fee settlement as “too severe”, suggesting “programme quality will suffer”. Wonder if his views are shared by his former SpAd?

Burnham could also safely be described as a Brownite, co-authoring an article during Labour’s leadership race with the strap line: “Only Gordon Brown can rejuvenate our party. A leadership election would threaten Labour’s unity”

Naturally, about an hour before the assorted appointments talking heads were saying this gap gave an opportunity to bring back some recognisable “big beasts” who would face down resurgent Tories. All talk now, naturally, is of Brown taking the chance to promote “the young guns he’d like to have in place”.

My latest Comment is Free piece, on the FoI Act and being googled by the cabinet office, can be found here.

Oh lor’, we’re in trouble now. George Soros doesn’t think the UK can avoid a US recession. The man has so much money now that he almost can’t lose - if he makes his views clear, the markets move in the appropriate direction based on his judgment. And, of course, the fact he has in the past leveraged tens of billions of dollars at a time. Still, I’m sure he’ll find a way to turn a profit out of the whole sorry mess…

The ASA has ruled against an plumbing firm offering “no call out charge to your door”. Their wheeze was to charge you a minimum as soon as they actually entered your house. So in the very strictest sense, they were speaking the truth. Cheeky gits.

Interesting front cover on yesterday’s metro - it’s at the bottom of this paragraph - in which they’d managed at the last minute to get a photo and very short story on Heath Ledger’s death into the paper. But the micro-story and pic is only pared off from the main headline by a hard to spot blue border:

Meaning that at a glance the Metro illustrated “Stress at work can be a killer” with a picture of Heath Ledger, the morning after his apparent suicide. Unfortunate, no?