Tag Archives: politics

Let's use google for good, then!

OK, so there’s the continuing rumbling rows about politicians expenses. Let’s have some fun seeing what we can find by looking online.

First things first – what data can we get, well there’s a bit on MPs at Westminster, but it’s not very detailed.

Instead, let’s look at MSPs and see what we can find there. We should look at the current financial year (2007-2008), then an expense that might be interesting, so how about Website Costs, which obviously I know something about. We get a total of £15,906.88 accross all MSPs, Charlie Gordon MSP has claimed £10,014.39 of that, now £35.40 of that was for Queen’s Park FC (?) and the remaining £9,978.99 was paid to GMG Solutions.

Hmm. What could make his website so much more expensive than everyone elses? Though admittedly only 20 MSPs claim for this expense anyway. For extra credit you might do a whois search, because then you find it lists a Gavin Gordon as the Administrative Contact. I wonder if he has an M for a middle initial and that GMG Solutions is his company. I’m not seeing anything illegal here, but it does seem odd, does it not, that one MSP claims about 62.9% of all expenses for all MSPs for this year for this type of expense. Maybe he should talk to his colleague George Foulkes who is a marvellous example of restraint in comparison with a single cost of £800 funding a website which includes a blog which even encourages Federalism (but without an rss feed, alas).

Should there not be something similar to the John Lewis list of reasonable prices as used in but not disclosed by Westminster to be used in assessing the costs all representatives charge the taxpayer for all expenses? Maybe Westminster does have something to teach Holyrood? Is it possible that other MSPs are listing their expenses for websites as a different type of expense, and if so are these figures not helpful when examined at this level?

But here’s the question I really want to know the answer to: if all this is public knowledge and freely searchable, why has no-one else picked up on it? After all Charlie Gordon was the subject of some considerable press coverage recently in the Wendy Alexander donations saga. Is it because it’s actually all hidden in so poor an interface as to make only random interrogation a useful method for finding things out? I’d dare say yes – time to try and write a site scraper, or see if anyone at the Scottish Parliament would be willing to provide a data feed.

If this is the last blog I ever make, do write to me in Belmarsh

The London Police have started another lovely new terror campaign, in their continuing efforts to stamp out the rampant threat of terrorism in London that threatens us all. This time they’re targetting people with multiple mobile phones and people who take photos of CCTV cameras.

So, mutiple phones looks suspicious, in that case we’re dead if the terrorists find these sim switching devices. Quick, make the technology illegal, THEN we’ll be safe.

How do you take a photograph in central London without including a CCTV camera anyway? OMG! What if the terrorists find the internet, there’s lots of photos of cctv cameras there – and maybe a map of them! Why look, the London Borough of Lambeth are terrorists.

(sigh)

And that took about 60 seconds of googling, just think what the finest terrorists on earth could achieve in an hour.

Rent

An interesting study reckons the way to sort out the rental market in London would be to encourage bigger brands and longer lets with branded build to let schemes. Now I can definitely see the attraction in this, because if I’m going to rent a property I’d rather it was modern, and well built, with someone caring for the whole block. Obviously if there’s a single owner this would be a good idea, and when you look at the proportion of new build flats that are bought solely to let as an investment there must be mileage in building such properties to be let.

Also, if I’m paying a more sensible rent for a higher quality property then I’ll either not want to buy a place or when I do I’ll actually have more of a deposit together thus negating the need to look for one of the now disappeared 125% mortgages.

There’s definitely the germ of a good idea in this, and it could be approached as a green policy if it helped foster a form of letting that encouraged owners to invest in energy efficiency and the like. Certainly as tenants move house more often than owners they are far more likely to make some form of choice based on a Home Information Pack like energy rating. And this is exactly the kind of scheme I had in my head when I objected to the new office block at the bottom of my road and instead suggested the council build something I could afford to rent/buy and live in.

And if you want to read the actual report it’s over here.