New Secret Squirrel items
Oct 30, 2005 Central Government, Request Diary
I’ve added two new additions to the Secret Squirrel pages:
1. A request to the Department for Constitutional Affairs for their Statute Law Database.
2. A request to the House of Commons asking for the number of attacks on MPs’ staff. This followed up my earlier request for the names of MPs’ staff. One of the [...]
Society of Editors Conference
Oct 24, 2005 FOI in the news
I attended the Society of Editors Conference October 16-18 in the Lake District and took part in a session entitled Freedom of Information – is it working?. Joining me on the panel were Graham Smith, Deputy Information Commissioner; Maurice Frankel, Director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information and Keith Mathieson, solicitor at the [...]
FOI in Parliament 13-21 October
Oct 24, 2005 FOI in Parliament
21 October 2005
Written Answers – Deputy Prime Minister: Regional Housing Boards
To ask the Deputy Prime Minister whether the regional housing boards will be subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 when they are merged with the regional chambers.
Yvette Cooper: …Regional Assemblies are voluntary bodies and not therefore subject to the *Freedom of Information* Act [...]
Let them read Heat
Oct 14, 2005 Articles
Has anybody in Britain actually read ‘1984′
The Independent, 13 October 2005
By Heather Brooke
“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody [...]
Shortlisted for campaigning journalism award
Oct 9, 2005 Articles
I have been shortlisted for the inaugural Paul Foot Award for campaigning journalism. The award was set up by Private Eye magazine, The Guardian and the National Union of Journalists in memory of journalist Paul Foot who died earlier this year.
The judges said:
“The cornerstone of Paul’s journalism was the public’s right to [...]
Information Commissioner: Delay and Indecision
Oct 5, 2005 Central Government
I have uploaded the caseload database from the Information Commissioner’s Office, which I received 4 August 2005.
It was quite a long process getting this database. Originally, in response to my 1 June 2005 FOIA request for ‘all complaints’ I was given a database containing just 375 entries. I knew from attending conferences that the Information [...]
