18 May - A pain in the backside
It has now been established that Dimitri Shvorob is not
vexatious but he may be A Very Naughty Boy guilty of harassment under the
Environmental Information Regulations. Every time he asks a question that can be
contorted into having an environmental impact, like the Information Commissioner’s
example of Zebra crossings causing additional vehicle pollution, to which I might
add its flashing beacon might cause one more gas fired power station to be fired
up, poor old Dimitri will be in trouble. Any question which causes a stressed
bureaucrat to sigh and expel additional Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere will put Dimitri’s question in jeopardy.
A ridiculous scenario obviously but that is where crooked decisions by crooked organisations lead us.
Somewhat to my surprise Dimitri was not critical of yesterday’s blog which trod
an uneasy path between him and Bexley Council which had wrongly accused him of
vexatiousness. By the legal definition maybe he is not vexatious but yesterday an email
from me to him used the term “a pain in the backside” which amounts to much the same thing.
In my book anyone whose mission is to expose the worst aspects of Bexley Council cannot be
all bad but his boundaries are different to mine. Collecting
information as a hobby activity is unappealing to me and not just because there is a cost associated with it.
An
hour or two’s work on each FOI according to Bexley Council so one might
guess that Dimitri’s 100+ FOIs came in at under £5,000. Not a lot in the grand
scheme of things but a guess was not good enough for
the mysterious Mr. Chapman who asked Cabinet Member David Leaf to be more precise.
Having posed the formal question in writing Mr. Chapman indulged in his own
little bit of wastefulness by failing to turn up to put it to the Council in person and
was apparently oblivious to the cost of asking a question which required far too
much historical research. Deputy Leader Leaf was much more sensible and
didn’t bother with dusting off his abacus and merely guessed that Dimitri has cost us all a few thousand pounds.
For David’s full answer click the extract above.
£5,000 or whatever the true figure may be will pale into insignificance
compared to the cost of the months of ICO work; dreaming up a dubious legal workaround
to dig Bexley Council out of its hole, writing a 31 page reply and handling the inevitable Appeal.
Everywhere one looks this country is bogged down by red tape and unnecessary
regulations and the tax implication is why we all feel worse off. The FOIA was
Tony Blair’s handiwork. What happened to David Cameron’s
Bonfire of the Quangos? Another Tory lie which has led to the highest taxes ever.