What were top 7 most viewed articles and top 7 most viewed videos for May 2016?
Power
Well just over a month has passed since polling day the election for a Merseyside PCC and local councillors on the Wirral and on the 23rd June 2016 there will be a referendum about membership of the EU.
As I’ll be at Wirral Council’s Cabinet meeting on Monday morning, instead I thought I’d look back at the most read stories of last month (May 2016) and some of the most watched videos. Both are in order of most viewed (so the top number 1 slot was the one that attracted the most interest).
Since I wrote this story question marks have also been raised about the election of two further Wirral councillors not referred to by name in the article, which leads to unanswered questions about over a quarter of the 23 councillors elected. If all six elections had been (or are in the next 2 years) declared null and void*, no political party would have a majority on Wirral Council.
*Highly unlikely considering how this country works or doesn’t work and I’d like to point out that councillors/candidates are innocent until proven guilty and that trial by media doesn’t count.
Time of hearing for EA/2016/0033 changed from 10.00 am to 10.15 am
Liverpool Civil & Family Court, Vernon Street, Liverpool, L2 2BX (the venue for the upcoming First-Tier Tribunal case EA/2016/0033)
First a declaration of interest, as I am the Appellant in the First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) case EA/2016/0033. The two respondents are the Information Commissioner’s Office and Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council.
I received notification from the Tribunal yesterday that the time for this hearing has been changed. It has been altered by fifteen minutes.
The original date and time was:
10.00 am 16th June 2016
The new date and time is (I have underlined the change for emphasis):
10.15 am 16th June 2016
The venue remains unchanged and is still
3rd Floor (Tribunals Service),
Liverpool Civil and Family Court
35 Vernon Street
Liverpool
Merseyside
L2 2BX
As the matter is now sub judice, unfortunately for legal reasons I will have to turn comments off on this post.
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Tribunal date set for 16th June 2016 over Wirral Council FOI request; but who’s being gagged?
Letter from Tribunal 21st April 2016 EA/2016/0033
Edited on 1st June 2016 as the time of hearing has changed.
Firstly a few brief declaration of interests, I’m the Appellant in case EA/2016/0033 before the First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights). The other respondents are Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council and the Information Commissioner (also called the Information Commissioners Office (ICO)). The letter also refers to case EA/2016/0054 which is another First-Tier Tribunal case I’m the Appellant in involving ICO and the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority. Oh and if anyone doesn’t know already I’m married to the Leonora referred to.
I need to point something out first. As a hearing date has been set the case is classed as "active", therefore although it’s only a Tribunal, all the rules about contempt of court apply.
It wasn’t the bit about gagging orders, or how a councillor was asked to resort to making a Freedom of Information request that I got cross about, but this part.
“Interestingly I have tried to involve the local media in this story. I didn’t get the tiniest response from them. It is part of the role of the ‘fourth estate’ to publicly shine a light on the doings and affairs of those in power. This seems to be lamentably missing in Greater Liverpool these days.”
I will point out at this stage that Cllr Richard Kemp hasn’t contacted me or as far as I know anyone to do with this blog! Of course politicians complaining about the press coverage (or in this case lack of press coverage) is nothing new.
Returning to a story on this blog earlier this week Why is Liverpool City Council not complying with ICO decision notice FS50591795?, the response from Liverpool City Council as to why the decision notice hasn’t been complied with has been the somewhat disappointing, “I acknowledge receipt of your e mail [sic] and I am now making enquiries as to the points made”
So, if Liverpool City Council want to do the local government equivalent of sulk because ICO didn’t agree with them and then go and ignore the enforcement notice, well I don’t want their bad habits on freedom of information to be picked up by Wirral Council do I?
Except you know, being the sort of person that believes in the public being informed I might not be withholding as much information as Liverpool City Council would. Please note these documents were not received through the freedom of information process (which seems to be utterly broken at Liverpool City Council).
Let’s start with a £3,000 invoice for the services of the rather scary looking Simon Burrows of Kings Chambers in a case in the Administrative Court (case reference number CO/932/2014 Karl Downey -v- Liverpool City Council). So therefore it was a judicial review. This invoice went to a Mr. Brendan McGrath who is a solicitor employed by Liverpool City Council.
Quite what the case was all about I really don’t know, but the scary looking guy invoiced Liverpool City Council £3,000 for a "Brief on Hearing" which was £2,500 + VAT. You can click on the thumbnail below for an easier to read version.
Kings Chamber invoice £3000 Liverpool City Council Simon Burrows thumbnail
Judicial reviews of Liverpool City Council decisions are hardly a big secret are they?
Let’s move onto something that led to one of the budget savings (if I remember my Liverpool City Council budget for 2016-17 correctly).
This is a £978 payment (although as a previous payment has been made in the same matter the total is £4,206) for “In the Matter of Advice regarding the refund of charges made by Liverpool for mental health aftercare services provided pursuant to s.117 of the Mental Health Act 1983”
The invoice went to Duncan Dooley-Robinson and Jeanette McLoughlin (who is Liverpool City Council’s Monitoring Officer). As above you can click on the thumbnail for an easier to read version.
Exchange Chambers invoice £978 Liverpool City Council Neil Cadwallader thumbnail
This invoice went to P (which stands for Paul) Merriman. Clicking on the thumbnail will load an easier to read version.
Six Pump Court invoice £2400 Liverpool City Council David Hercock thumbnail
Well that’s three out of the twenty-two invoices. Hopefully the release of this information will prompt Liverpool City Council into complying with the ICO decision notice!
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These don’t include taxi journeys where councillors have paid for the taxi themselves and then claimed back the cost.
Sadly, due to a lot of missing pages (curiously always the ones with councillors’ names on them), plus a number of pages scanned at such low quality making them very difficult to read, I’ve requested an internal review.
There was an £85 taxi journey listed on page 5. By the price list published on my blog here it comes to a taxi journey of around 67 and a half miles.
Sadly the second page of the invoice that invoice from May 2015 that would state who undertook this unusually long journey is not supplied. The invoice itself is of such low quality it’s hard to read how far this journey was. However if you’re going on a journey that far why not take the train instead?
In fact if the journey was by a councillor then Wirral Council’s constitution states (members means councillors):
“8. Travel and Subsistence
Travel Costs
8.1 Travel costs incurred by members in performing “approved duties” as specified in Schedule 2 to this Scheme shall be reimbursed at the prevailing public transport rates, provided that the use of taxis or members’ private motor vehicles may be permitted where public transport is either not available, or the journey by public transport would be likely to result in unreasonable delay.”
Sadly as Wirral Council didn’t respond properly to this FOI request it’s impossible to tell whether a councillor took this journey or not!
However over the 6 months of invoices where names were supplied, here are how many taxi journeys were undertaken by each councillor at the taxpayers’ expense. For shared journeys I’ve counted it as one journey for each councillor sharing the taxi:
Cllr Moira McLaughlin (38) Cllr Steve Niblock (23) Cllr Bill Davies (13) Cllr Irene Williams (5) Cllr Pat Williams (2) Cllr Kathy Hodson (1) Cllr Denise Roberts (1) Cllr Phil Davies (1)
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