Archive for June 19th, 2009

Stop Hiding Behind “Security”

Published by Iain on June 19, 2009 in National Comment. 0 Comments

It isn’t hard to find out where politicians live if you really want to do so.

The overwhelming majority of Councillors (including me) have their home addresses published online and in Council publications. Almost all are on the electoral register – data that is easily obtainable. Home addresses are printed on election ballot papers and at polling stations, and rightly so – local people have the right to know whether their candidates live locally.  Then there’s the media – it’s hard not to know where Hazel Blears has her constituency home, as there’s been a constant scrum of media figures parked outside it for the past month or so.

So let’s not have any crying wolf about “security” or “privacy” over the blacked-out expenses. That’s just not good enough. By all means blank out the details of office staff – but for the MPs themselves there are no excuses. Publish or be damned.

Downtime

Published by Iain on June 19, 2009 in Site News. 1 Comment

My apologies for the unavailability of this site over the last day or two. There has been a problem with my hosting company’s server hardware – a “catastrophic failure of the embeded network cards” (whatever that means). Everything should be back to normal now – please contact me if you encounter any further problems.