Rob Shorrock

One of the bizarre elements of the Freedom of Information Act  is that it is trumped by the much earlier Data Protection Act. With some garlands of privacy and nods to Human Rights legislation thrown in this means that you and I as tax payers are not allowed to know how much of our tax pounds are paid out by public authorities under severance or redundancy arrangments when it would be possible to identify the individual involved. Therefore to find out how much was paid to terminate the Chief Executive's contract at SKDC is impossible as there was only one Chief Executive and at the time he was Duncan Kerr.

Essentially, it becomes impossible to find out what the full outgoing package is for any senior official in a public authority. Yet, a council committee can pledge in secret a significant sum of taxpayers money through a closed negotiation that they do not have to be publically accountable for. Ask questions. The answer comes back - that information is confidential. What perplexes me is how do they hide this on their balance sheet, which of course is publically available?

I await the answer on that one. 

However, in the case of SKDC I have discovered they paid out, so far, £5000 plus in legal costs for this whole exercise. But beyond that we know nothing and the pack mentality of the elected members supposedly representing the people will honour a foetid deal, which should not have been made on these terms, rather than hold themselves accountable to the people.

The citizens of England are seizing power in an information revolution. Against the fall out of the MPs' expenses scandal, small battles are waged in localities up and down the land. These battles are about rights, freedom and liberties - the battle lines are between local authorities and aggrieved citizens. Access to information educates and enlightens, but also empowers citizens to challenge attempts to introduce measures proclaimed to combat crime and disorder which can end up trampling over civil liberties and may even blatantly discriminate against sections of the population.

In Grantham 18 year old Jeremy Bellamy and students at Grantham college are campaigning against a youth crowd dispersal device, brand name - ‘The mosquio' - installed by SKDC near the steps of the Guildhall. The device is essentially a sonic alarm set at a frequency which can only be heard by people under the age of 25. The ‘buzzer', as they call it, causes discomfort and in younger children some distress. The idea is that it will deter young people from congregating on the Guildhall steps.

SKDC are attempting to argue that their duties to prevent crime and disorder outweigh duties not to discriminate against citizens. The position of Jeremy and the students is principled and powerful: this is about human rights and in particular the rights of citizens to move and meet in public spaces without fear of harm and distress. SKDC, it would seem, has decided that this principle does not apply to some citizens on the spurious basis that they are trying to protect all citizens. Direct discrimination is therefore OK.

On investigating this issue further, Jeremy has discovered that the council did not carry out an equalities impact assessment on this decision. Worse, the only legal advice they seem to have taken is from the manufacturer and supplier. I also suspect they never carried out a proper consultation with people who could be affected. The whole decision, lacking bother rigour and perspective, has also had the effect of potentially alienating a group of citizens that the council desperately needs to engage.

The students are meeting with councillors and the anti-social behaviour team this Wednesday with the objective of getting the ‘buzzer' disabled or removed. I suspect the council will try to turn this into a negotiation about the times when it should be on. They will defend the decision by remarking that the device has been in place for three years and no-one has complained until recently. They will also argue it works and present evidence that the number of incidents recorded has reduced since the introduction of the device.

This may be all true, but the means do not justify the end. This is not about negotiation. It should be about contrition and apology by a council that missed the point and made a bad decision that insults the young people of Grantham.

The curmudgeons were out in force yesterday. Rich men peeved at prying by the proletariat. There was Speaker Martin - pompous, pampered and consumed by priviledge and power - railing at pseudo-celeb MPs for daring to speak to the media about the affairs of Parliament. There was nice Stephen Fry resembling the kind of man he would normally detest, an angry bufoon spitting vitriol at the media and charging us all with hypocrisy. After all, we are all fiddling our expenses, aren't we? Speak for yourself Stephen.

Pissed off rich men. Aghast at the impudence and impertinence of the British public and simultaneously missing the greater moral point.

Matthew D'Ancona captures this moral contradiction in his excellent piece in the Spectator. It is clear that MPs asked to account for themselves err on the side of dissonance, or in the case of Alan Duncan something more akin to psychosis - the system made me BAD! Blaming the system for your bad behaviour - never really a goer since the 70's - is the last refuge for MPs who not only decieved the people they represent but themsleves as well. They are simply unfit to be representatives and leaders. If ever there was a time for political parties to rediscover their moral authority and courage to deselect these people it is surely now.

What of the rules? The Green Book recently revised. For many of us, hearing some MPs belligerantly arguing that their claims are within the rules makes the whole episode seem like and absurd and tragic game. A game to which we are merely spectators not quite understanding how it works. But changing the rules to the same game is irrelevant. Some MPs seem to forget that this is not the game we want them to be playing.

The proposals for independent audit and developing a system that administers MPs expenses and allowances away from MPs in what would be a new and inevitably expensive privatised quango is just another perverse dimension of this game, and ultimately will be a doomed attempt to try and hide all this stuff away from us again. Not only is the plainly wrong it is also dangerous. The mother of all Parliaments should not have to be held held in check by an unelected body outside the justice system. As democrats, we all want Parliament to work and to be the cradle of our democracy, which we revere and respect, and embody the values and behaviours inherent in this. I actually don't want elected representatives to be in a perpetual power struggle with penny counting bueracrats.

In the present furore, it may seem odd to say that we actually need fewer rules rather than more. But this issue has never really been about rules; it has always been about ethical behaviour, responsibility and integrity.

Peter Bottomley put this well on Radio 4 the other day: "MPs," he said, "should only claim for what they would be happy to have printed in their local paper." It is a fine test and should be bourne in mind by those MPs who appear to spend an inordinate amount of time composing and submitting claims.

But think about. Ultimately, this is all that is really needed. Aside from disallowing MPs to buy and sell property with public money, there should be few other rules in a Parliament that full embraces openness and freedom of information. Democracy demands that everything is published - every receipt, every claim, every justification. MPs will then be held to account not only by the media, but the public, their electorates and their own parties. In this way, democracy is the great cleanser.

In a strange way this scandal has been good for democracy. Secrecy is poison to democracy and it seems incredible to many people that MPs expenses and allowances have been secret for so long. As citizens maybe we have not been vigilant enough? Labour can be proud of creating the Freedom of Information Act a key plank of the 97 manifesto designed to empower people with information and knowledge about the actions of the state an essential right in a modern democracy. Not only has this stimulated a huge number of searching questions and challenged the standard default position to hide information in government it is also fuelling a new political literacy. But a Labour government is likely to be killed off by its own creation. It can take one last brave and memorable action before the end and enhance the Freedom of Information legislation to cover all areas of Parliament, government, the quangocracy and the use of public funding by all agencies. There should be no hiding places for those that make decisions on behalf of others, or on behalf of themselves, with taxpayers money.

On Question Time last night, Frank Skinner developed the technique of 'astonished interrogation'. The issue was about MPs having second jobs, or to be more precise second incomes, as the non-executive directorships that many Tories hold would hardly count as hard graft. Frank's approach of pseudo-innocent bewilderment resulted in Andrew Lansley having to declare that he earned £24k for the equivalent of 12 days work a year.

The Tories have decided to remain silent on second incomes, which is not surprising given that many of them do earn additional incomes far in excess of an MPs salary. For balance, there are a significant number of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs who are also partial to additional earning opportunities.

Should this be allowed? Last night, Andrew Lansley pulled out the old, tattered and grubby explanation that his non-executive directorship keeps him in touch with the world of commerce and business and this helps him be a better MP. The problem with this explanation is why do they always take the most lucrative positions with very little actual work involved and why do these businesses appoint them? When you look at it this way, the real problem emerges. These companies want MPs on their boards to get knowledge about potential policy issues that could help or hinder their businesses and secure future influence. It isn't about the MPs business acumen, more about who he or she knows. This is the great fault line that Labour in opposition will need to exploit mercilessly; how can Tory MP's represent all the people equally when some people in business have more access to an MP than others by simply paying them?

Cameron is shrewd enough to realise this. He also knows that MPs who are non-executive directors, or have other business interests get round the rules by working with each other to ask questions so that it cannot be directly traced back to an individual MP - the underworld approach head gangsters and dealers might use in The Wire to appear squeaky clean - never touch the drugs. Cameron knows that a good journalist could uncover this and the sleaze allegations will bring his administration to an early end.

There is another group of MPs who are essentially 'celebs'. They are columnists, TV pundits, appear on panel shows, do after dinner slots and so on. Some of them even have agents for this purpose. They exploit the priviledge and profile that being an elected politician gives them simply to make money. Here there can be no justification. And as Frank pointed out, "How do they get the time to do a second job?"

Back in 2005, George Monbiot wrote "Transparent corruption is doubtless an improvement upon opaque corruption, but it seems only to have dissuaded people from pressing the case for no corruption at all. If there is one job which should command a person's undivided loyalties, it is surely the job of representing us."

Too true. To represent the people as their MP must be seen as the highest honour and privilidge in the land. To have another job at the same time is not only to hold the office of MP in contempt but to tell the electorate that you are at the mercy of other interests

 Having just washed a rather smelly dog I noticed that the dog shampoo was described as an 'aromatherapy shampoo'. Why dogs need an aromatherapy shampoo defeats me. My dog's behaviour during and after the bathing experience appears to be no different.

The Bad Science Forums is currently debating the topic Homeopathy for Dogs, but more importantly the evidence for homeopathy actaully working. I liked the following: 

1. Do a small, rubbish study, publish it as a pilot study so none can really complain its rubbish.
2. Draw tentative positive conclusions that are not really born out by the data but couch them in speculative terms.
3. Release a press release announcing new and conclusive evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy.
4. Add study to list of positive evidence for homeopathy and circulate to Hpath students, practitioners and true believers.
5. Complain these studies are not included in meta-analysis. Use this as further evidence of conspiracy against homeopathy.
6. Do another small rubbish study in an unrelated area to the first study.
7. as 2

You could apply this sequence to a whole range of quack therapies.