Oh I agree people *vote* for parties, but also there's an approval of an independent streak in MPs themselves - so curious if leaving parties in itself, as opposed to joining another, is seen differently.
I think there's a difference between sitting as an independent and switching parties, would be interested if there were different opinions
How local councils use FOI themselves to find out information from other councils, on topics ranging from adult social care reviews to allotment policies … (and despite what one council says, that’s a good and productive use of FOI) - rosenbaum.org.uk/from-one-cou...
Really helpful thanks
Ooo, what's the bigger story this fits into? At this time were interests disclosed to depts but never made public? And this was saying the park ombudsman couldnt publish information derived from this?
So here George Greenwood is after what Sunak disclosed to the Cabinet Office, before it what was ruled relevant was published in the ministerial register. This might be reasonably withheld or not, but the weird part is the CO withholding the document from the ICO during the appeal process.
FOI/Register of interests overlap relightmyfoia.blog/2024/09/25/a...
Turn your minds back to the late Sunak era, and you might remember a story about his declarations of interests. He was given a ticking off by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, after he had...
And here's the basic theory of change: carefully sequencing volunteers and technology can be a very efficient way of increasing surveillance and putting pressure on poorly enforced rules from the outside. Let's see how that goes.
A framing I think that's really useful to understanding corruption in the UK is that it's a high trust society where a lot of it works by being aware of payoffs far in the future - removing the need for transactional bribes. I liked this quote research.mysociety.org/html/wft-lit...
lol but also this is philosophically what we're trying to do - draw out important details and make them more prominent through the existing platform.