Fife Council publishes councillors’ expenses

Fife Council recently published “Councillors expenses for 2008/09″ [sic]. Although this is never going to be as exciting as recent revelations about MPs’ expenses, or even MSPs’ expenses, it is maybe still worth analysing a bit. If you download the Excel file of expenses, you’ll see it’s been formatted for print, with the page header repeated about half-way down, presumably where the page break occurs. For some reason, in Open Office, the council logo is reversed.

Anyway, rather than try and read through a spreadsheet of numbers, I’ve tried graphing some of the data.  Please click on the graphs to see each fullsize.

Salary
Since the last local authority elections in 2007, councillors have received a salary and not just expenses. Heads of committees, the provost, etc. receive a higher salary.

For some reason Margaret Kennedy received a marginally smaller salary than her colleagues; £15,445.24 instead of £15,785.73.

Travel Expenses
This first graph shows all councillors. You can see the long tail effect, with several councillors claiming zero travel expenses. These travel expenses do not include rail, air or taxi fares. The mileage rate is 40p per mile, reduced from 49.3p.

Unfortunately Google Docs saves the image without all names visible. So this second graph shows just the top 30 names.

Gerald McMullan and Tim Brett clearly have higher claims than anyone else, at least £1000 more than the third highest.

For Councillor McMullan to claim £6993.64 in travel expenses, at 40p per mile, he must have driven 17,484.1 miles in a year. I’ve no idea if that is reasonable. He lives in Crossford, approximately 24 miles from Glenrothes. If we divide 17,484.1 by 48, we get 364.252083. In other words, if he was only doing the return drive from his council ward to the council headquarters, he’d have to make that journey every day for a year to justify his travel expense claim. However he must do lots of other mileage besides, e.g. driving round to various locations in his ward. I’d still be interested to find out more about exactly what mileage he claimed for. For example if we could see his daily mileage claims instead of just an annual total.

ICT Expenses
Only 8 out of 78 councillors claimed any ICT expenses. The spreadsheet says “Communication and IT Costs, Mobile Phone Costs and Provision of Council Cars borne by Fife Council is not generally a cost incurred directly by individual Councillors.” I’m therefore unsure what William Walker managed to claim £670 pounds for. If full receipts were published this would clear things up.

Rail / Air / Taxis / Hotels
Less than a third of councillors claimed for this.

You would expect the council Leader Peter Grant to have the highest claim, on the assumption he’s representing the council at national and international events. Second highest is Mike Rumney (listed as Robert Rumney on the spreadsheet), with a claim of £1,241.31. Again, without more information, it’s impossible to tell how this money was spent.

Total expenses
Again, Google Docs produces an image without all names visible:

And here’s the top 30 names. Gerry McMullan clearly with the highest expense claims due almost entirely to his high travel expenses.

The worst thing in the world

I don’t know what your opinion is of torture, but personally I’m against it. The US Government has published some secret memos detailing the legal justification for their torture enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA in the ‘war on terror‘. Mostly these are just self-serving legalistic jargon explaining why the end justifies the means.

The techniques range from relatively mild (slaps to the face or abdomen, shoving captives against a wall) to the extreme (sleep deprivation, prolonged stress positions, water boarding).

The first of these memos (PDF) has the following section:

In addition to using the confinement boxes alone, you also would like to introduce an insect into one of the boxes with Zubaydah. As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar. If you do so, to ensure that you are outside the predicate act requirement, you must inform him that the insects will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain. If, however, you were to place the insect in the box without informing him that you are doing so, then, in order to not commit a predicate act, you should not affirmatively lead him to believe that any insect is present which has a sting that could produce severe pain or suffering or even cause his death. [censored] so long as you take either of the approaches we have described, the insect’s placement in the box would not constitute a threat of severe physical pain or suffering to a reasonable person in his position. An individual placed in a box, even an individual with a fear of insects, would not reasonably feel threatened with severe physical pain or suffering if a caterpillar was placed in the box.

Does that remind you of anything? The following excerpts are from George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four:

‘The worst thing in the world,’ said O’Brien, ‘varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.’
…
‘In your case,’ said O’Brien, ‘the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.’
…
‘By itself,’ he said, ‘pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable–something that cannot be contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you.’

Glenrothes by-election missing register – inquiry report published

Last month it was reported that the Glenrothes by-election register of electors had gone missing, despite a statutory obligation to keep it for a year after the election. The inquiry into its disappearance has published its report (PDF). If you’re interested I’d recommend you read the PDF, because it contains much more information than any of the news reports, which don’t seem to go beyond the executive summary.

The report’s author, Bill McQueen CBE, is very clear to stress that there is no evidence or suggestion of foul play.

“Human error and management failure” are to blame. In particular, it seems to have been slightly bad luck that the basement they decided to store the files in was also being cleared out of old furniture and confidential waste by contract workers during November – January.

“A failure to store the registers in a more secure location” is cited, which is a clear breach of the Data Protection Act. I hope that the Information Commissioner will now issue an Enforcement Notice against the Scottish Courts Service.

The Returning Officer‘s staff delivered all the papers from the election on the 18th and 26th November. Most of that was in labelled black bags, but the register of electors was hand-delivered in a box to the Office Manager at the Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court. This was “because the documents in this box were likely to have to be accessed to respond to requests from candidates”. Despite this, “Sheriff Court staff were clear that any box of registers received in the general office would have been quickly moved and stored in the basement along with the election black bags”.
FAIL!

The SNP had put in a preliminary request on the 19th November, asking for the cost to get a copy of the register. Surely knowing that, a week later when you get the documents they’re looking for, you might think to yourself “this could be handy, I’ll keep it here in the office” instead of dumping it in the basement.

The failure to respond to SNP Councillor John Beare‘s request for over two months is particularly telling:
“A court officer … accepted responsibility for the task but ascribed it a lower priority than her core court duties. She worked part-time … and because of pressure of work and annual leave periods, did not seek to complete the task until late January.”
“there was no system in place … for her managers to monitor ad hoc duties such as this…”
“Councillor Beare received no acknowledgement to his letter of 19 November and … he made follow up phone calls to enquire about progress on 10 December, 14, 20, 23 and 29 January. He received responses that the officer dealing with his request was out of the office and that messages would be passed on and calls returned, but they were not.”

Anyone who’s worked in the public sector will recognise all the above as being quite common. Lack of management oversight, part-time workers hard to get in contact with, requests for information or minor tasks being overlooked for months, messages not passed on, etc.

Apparently one reason she’d put the task off was she thought she’d have to open 95 envelopes and count up the names to calculate the cost for Councillor Beare. However the costing system had changed, meaning it would have taken her seconds instead of hours to carry out the initial request. The Sheriff Clerk was aware of this, but hadn’t passed on the information to the staff member who would be doing this.
FAIL!

The use of bin bags to store all this information is maybe less than ideal. It’s no wonder that, when dumped in the corner of a basement, these might be mistaken for genuine rubbish to be dumped.

The register of postal electors has been re-constructed from available data by the Returning Officer. The postal votes were probably the most contentious issue for the SNP, given postal turn-out was much higher than anticipated. I expect they will by now have received a copy of this register, and are hopefully satisfied it was all legit.

The report as a whole is worth reading, and top marks to the author and his team for putting it together reasonably quickly (I expected something might come out after six months, by which time everyone would have forgotten it).

• By-election report fails to answer questions, The Courier
• Registers ‘may have been binned’, BBC
• Fife by-election blunder verdict, Press and Journal
• Glenrothes documents lost due to ‘failures in handling’, The Herald
• ‘Human error’ to blame for Glenrothes register loss, STV

Glenrothes by-election register missing, presumed dead

It’s been widely reported that the Sheriff Court in Kirkcaldy has managed to lose the official electoral register from the Glenrothes by-election in November last year. The register lists all the names of who voted, at which polling stations (but not how they voted), and is meant to be kept for a year, and made open for inspection. The SNP made repeated requests to see it, starting in November shortly after the election, and it’s taken until now for the Sheriff’s office to admit they don’t have it.

SNP MSP Tricia Marwick said:

“It is almost beyond belief that a by-election which attracted media coverage throughout the UK, which delivered a surprise result and had a much higher turnout than anticipated now has no records to show who actually voted.

“I have no evidence of foul play. I sincerely hope not. But the turnout at this by-election surprised everyone and the result was a surprise.“

Without coming straight out and saying it, it sounds to me like she’s hinting that the election might have been rigged; without the register they’ll never know. Lindsay Roy say they’d be happy for a recount, because the ballot papers haven’t been lost. However there’s no way of telling who voted without the register, so the ballots could have been rigged by registering multiple false names on the electoral register (for instance).

The Courier are reporting Marwick’s statement slightly differently:

Asked if she suspected foul play, she said, “No I do not. Nor do I believe it was a fair election“.

Of course that implies some level of Machiavellian plotting from all involved; the Labour politicians not only managing to pinch the election, but also to collaborate with someone in the sheriff court to steal and destroy the evidence. Incredibly unlikely, it’s almost guaranteed to be pure incompetence on the parts of someone in the courts. Sounds like the register’s been chucked into their secure paper disposal bucket.

On the other hand, this is just yet another public sector loss of important data, and the Information Commissioner should issue an enforcement notice against the Scottish Courts Service. Not just for the loss, but also the lateness in admitting they’d lost it.

Some sources:

• The Times: Official Glenrothes by-election results ‘lost’
• Telegraph: SNP demands inquiry into missing Glenrothes by-election records
• Courier: Full inquiry into missing by-election record
• BBC: By-election registers go missing
• The Herald: Demand for inquiry as Glenrothes by-election register is lost

Also reported in The Spoof: Mugabe: Brown an ‘Excellent Student’

Mr Mugabe said, “Mr Brown has been an excellent student, for a colonialist. He quickly learned the rules of ‘Banana-Republic’ electioneering and, with my help, he ensured that Glenrothes, [population of 47,000] had 1.2 million registered postal voters, all of whom voted Labour“.

MSPs’ expense claims: Data Protection Registrar

After looking at how MSPs were claiming expenses for their websites, I decided to see if there were any other interesting facts to be gleamed from the MSP Allowances search form.

One of the categories they can claim for is Data Protection Registration, and reassuringly, 94 claims were made for this in financial year 2007-2008. I say claims, because only 93 MSPs claimed but Bill Wilson claimed twice, in February 2007 and November 2007. I’m not entirely sure how a claim for February 2007 can appear in results for a financial year that started in April 2007.

However there are 129 MSPs, which means 36 didn’t claim for this expense. When you register as a Data Controller, you have to pay £35 annually. So those 36 MSPs haven’t registered, or have incorrectly claimed the £35 expense in a different category, or have paid the fee but just not claimed for it.

So, can we find out which MSPs haven’t registered with the Information Commissioner?

Conveniently, the ICO has a search form for the Data Protection Public Register. Typing in MSP will give you almost 80 names straight away. To find the rest it’s a case of plugging in the names. Some have variations on how they’ve spelled their name, but eventually I got down to a list of eight names I couldn’t find:

Name	Party	Constituency
Andy Kerr	Labour Party	East Kilbride
Bruce Crawford	Scottish National Party	Stirling
Elizabeth Smith	Conservative	Mid Scotland and Fife
Jim Mather	Scottish National Party	Argyll and Bute
Joe Fitzpatrick	Scottish National Party	Dundee West
Margaret Curran	Labour Party	Glasgow Baillieston
Nicola Sturgeon	Scottish National Party	Glasgow Govan
Nigel Don	Scottish National Party	North East Scotland

It might be that these MSPs have registered under a different name that I’ve not searched for, or there’s been a typo when the details have been entered into the system.

Let’s cross-check those eight names against the list of names who claimed expenses, and see which of those eight have claimed:

• Andy Kerr, January 2008
• Bruce Crawford, November 2007
• Elizabeth Smith, January 2008
• Joe Fitzpatrick, October 2007
• Margaret Curran, January 2008
• Nicola Sturgeon, June 2007
• Nigel Don, October 2007

So they all claimed except for Jim Mather. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume they are correctly registered with the ICO, and for some reason I’m just not having any luck finding them on the Data Protection Public Register.

MSPs, MPs, MEPs and Councillors are basically obliged to register as Data Controllers. Some information I’ve found on the ICO site confirms this:

Organisations or individuals that process personal information covered by the Act may need to notify the Commissioner about their processing. A description of the processing activities is placed on a public register of notifications. These organisations or individuals must also comply with eight data protection principles which together form a framework for the proper handling of personal information. Individuals whose personal information is processed have rights under the Act, for example, to a copy of the information that is held about them.
…
When elected members represent residents of their ward, they are likely to have to notify in their own right, for example, if they use personal information to timetable surgery appointments or take forward complaints made by local residents.
…
The Data Protection Act contains a number of criminal offences including:
When someone is required to notify and does not do so. For example, a councillor who holds computerised records of constituents’ details for casework purposes, would commit an offence if they had not notified this use of personal information.

Someone should be checking these eight MSPs to make sure they have been correctly registered with the ICO. If you are a constituent of any of these MSPs, you might want to use the excellent WriteToThem.com to ask your MSP what name they have registered with the Information Commissioner.

Unfit for the BBC?

This is the Disasters Emergency Committee video appeal the BBC’s Director General, Mark Thompson, is unwilling to air because it would apparently compromise the BBC’s impartiality.

An article in today’s Guardian suggests part of Mark Thompson’s reasoning might be connected to the Balen report into its Middle East coverage, which is as yet unpublished, despite attempts to get it released under Freedom Of Information.

Update: today’s Guardian has further details that shed more light on this:

Under guidelines agreed between the DEC and broadcasters, three criteria warrant a nationwide appeal:

• substantial, urgent need in a humanitarian crisis;
• evidence that aid agencies can guarantee effective assistance on the ground;
• and sufficient “public awareness, and sympathy for” the humanitarian crisis.

All of which are currently met by the crisis in Gaza. But the BBC say: “Preserving our impartiality is the BBC’s main criterion when deciding whether to broadcast an appeal”. The DEC have been broadcasting similar appeals since the 1960s, and only this one and their previous appeal for the Israel-Lebanon conflict in 2006 have been rejected by the BBC for “impartiality” reasons. (Some have been rejected for failing to meet all of the three criteria above).

Previous DEC appeals the BBC broadcast include:

• 1999 Kosovo war
• 1990 Gulf conflict
• 1982, for victims of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon
• 1968, for victims of the Vietnam war
• 1967, for Palestinian and Syrian refugees displaced by the Six Day War

And many others that might not be considered “impartial“.

It seems Mark Thompson is now making up what the guidelines are when deciding to show the DEC’s appeals. Incidentally, Thompson has held meetings with Ariel Sharon, and has a Jewish wife, but I’m sure neither of those would be affecting his decision-making capabilities on this matter.

MSPs’ expenses

There was a shameful attempt recently by the Government to try and cover up the detail of MPs’ expenses, which thankfully never happened. Coincidentally, today the Scottish Parliament published MSPs’ expenses.

The Scottish Parliament website has a pretty awful search interface to get details of all expenses claimed. Despite being a bad form, it does allow you to select from the various categories for Expenditure Type. One of the categories is "Website Costs". Here’s the figures for which MSPs claimed how much for their website, in the 2007-2008 financial year.

MSP	Website Costs
Charlie Gordon	£12822.62
John Wilson	£2291.25
Joe Fitzpatrick	£1500
Tavish Scott	£1315.50
George Foulkes	£1011.50
Wendy Alexander	£987.37
Karen Gillon	£940
Pauline Mcneill	£918
Claire Baker	£841.38
Kenny Macaskill	£556.38
Margaret Smith	£544.84
Malcolm Chisholm	£497.57
Alex Fergusson	£429.07
Kenneth Macintosh	£423
Bob Doris	£390
Jamie Hepburn	£360
Bashir Ahmad	£350
Michael Mcmahon	£303.55
Keith Brown	£300
Lewis Macdonald	£293.75
Michael Matheson	£273.69
Fergus Ewing	£252.64
Mike Pringle	£223.33
Jack Mcconnell	£211.32
Robert Brown	£200
Sandra White	£200
Bill Wilson	£200
Alex Neil	£190
Duncan Mcneil	£137.21
Karen Whitefield	£117.50
Tom Mccabe	£99.97
John Swinney	£98.86
Murdo Fraser	£76.38
Ted Brocklebank	£47
Derek Brownlee	£31.75
Stuart Mcmillan	£24.20

Sometimes it’s easier to understand things visually. Here’s a graph of just the top twenty names from the list above:

The most obvious thing you’ll notice is that Charlie Gordon (Labour) is paying over £10,000 more than the next highest for his website. The site’s not too bad, about what you might expect from a typical MP or MSP’s site; a little bit of Flash used for navigation, reasonable design, plenty of content. But is it worth paying more than £1000 a month for? I’m not so sure… however, the plot thickens.

Using the Scottish Parliament site, it is possible to see exactly what each individual expense is made out to. As has been reported today in The Herald and the Evening Times, Charlie Gordon hasn’t just been paying over the odds for his website; he’s been paying it to his son’s company!

He’s since added a statement to his news page, claiming "My website costs for 2007/08 were around £1,700; not £12,900 as stated erroneously on the Scottish Parliament’s website!" Of course, it must be the Parliament that’s made a mistake. I look forward to finding out how they were mistaken to the tune of £11,000!

Interestingly, only 36 out of 129 MSPs claimed expenses under the Website Costs category. Either the other 93 don’t have websites, or have them paid for by their party, or are claiming the expenses in a different category, or aren’t claiming the expenses for the website.

I expect some other interesting figures might be found from the MSPs’ expenses. It would be great if they could setup a proper API to query that data, so the likes of They Work For You could use the information. The same applies to when the MPs’ expenses finally get published.

MPs’ expenses

Members of Parliament make a basic salary of £63,291. Some of them get paid additional salary for other responsibilities, e.g. if they are a government minister. For instance, here’s a few salaries:

• £194,250 Prime Minister
• £141,866 Cabinet Minister
• £141,866 Speaker
• £77,330 Select Committee Chair

On top of that, they get pretty much all their expenses paid for. For instance they can claim up to:

• £100,205 staffing allowance (often with family members being paid from this)
• £22,193 incidental expenses
• £24,006 additional living costs, e.g. for staying away from home while attending parliament
• £10,400 communication allowance
• generous travel expenses

Also, when an MP leaves the commons at a general election, they get a lump sum of between 50% and 100% of their annual salary. I’m not sure if this applies to those that lose their seats, or just to those that stand down, but I’m guessing both.

So in total they get a very healthy amount of money from the taxpayer every year. As do MSPs, MEPs and Councillors.

However, they are very secretive about revealing their expenses. There have been several Freedom Of Information requests in the last few years trying to get MPs to reveal exactly what they’re claiming expenses for. After going all the way to the High Court trying to fight against the Information Commissioner’s decision, they’re now about to decide whether to exempt themselves from having to do just that.

This exemption will prevent us discovering exactly what it is MPs are spending their expenses on. For instance, under FOI requests that have already been published, we discovered that Margaret Beckett claimed £1,920 for plants, Barbara Follett claimed £1,600 for window cleaning and Tony Blair claimed £10,000 for refurbishing his kitchen.

Parliament has already spent about a million pounds preparing for making expense claims public, (mostly scanning receipts by the sounds of things) but all that money, time and effort is going to be wasted. MPs vote on Harriet Harman’s proposal on Thursday 22nd. This will be going against High Court ruling that their expense receipts should be published.

Things you can do right now:

• Join the Facebook group and invite your contacts to also join.
• Write to your MP asking them to vote against this.
• Write to your local newspapers to complain.

Some links to find out more:

• My Society
  • 6 days to stop MPs concealing their expenses
• Daily Mail
  • Taxpayers foot £1m bill for publication of expenses but MPs STILL want to cover them up
• Guardian
  • Government exempts MPs’ expenses from freedom of information
  • MPs to be exempt from publishing expenses
  • Ministers face anger over plan to exempt MPs’ expenses from freedom of information
  • Freedom of information takes a battering
  • Expenses spared
  • Nothing to declare?
• The Times
  • MPs defy the judges to keep ‘John Lewis’ expenses list secret
• BBC
  • MPs’ expenses plan ‘outrageous’
  • So now we know …
  • Blair was chased over unpaid bill

Israel versus Gaza

I thought it might be illuminating to attempt to visually illustrate aspects of the current Israel vs Gaza conflict.

Deaths on both sides since conflict began:

• 821 Palestinians
• 13 Israelis

Deaths of Palestinians – adults/children:

• 257 children
• 501 adults

Populations of Israel and Gaza:

Country	Population
Gaza	1,481,080
Israel	7,282,000

Population density:

Country	Density (km2)
Gaza	4,118
Israel	324

If the Gaza Strip was a country, it’d have the sixth highest population density of any country.

Country	Density (km2)
Macau	18,196
Monaco	16,754
Hong Kong	6,422
Singapore	6,336
Gibraltar	4,654
Gaza	4,118
Vatican City	1,866

Sources:

• Wikipedia
  • 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict
  • Gaza Strip
  • Israel
  • List of countries and dependencies by population density
• United Nations
  • Security Council overwhelmingly calls for immediate Gaza ceasefire

Things to keep an eye on in 2009

Some things that are going to feature in the news a lot in 2009 and/or that I will be keeping a keen interest in, in no particular order:

President Barack Obama

Starts his job on January 20th. There seems to be a massive amount of hyperbole and eager anticipation about this. However I think it’s too early to tell; it’ll be a real case of wait-and-see. Will he be any better than Bill Clinton for instance? At least he can’t be as bad as G.W. Bush.

Climate change

This will continue to be an issue globally that most countries will try and shirk their responsibilities for. China is now the world’s largest polluter. Expect freak weather events to become yet more common.

Gaza / Israel

As I write, Israel are apparently gearing up for sending troops into the Gaza Strip. That’s likely to be slightly more successful for them than their invasion of Lebanon in 2006. I’m hoping for an imminent end to their bombing of Gaza, withdrawal of their troops, lifting the blockades on trade and aid currently in place, etc.

Economic crisis

2009 will probably be worse financially, at least in the UK, than the disastrous 2008. Will Britain join the Euro? Which big retailers will go into administration? House prices will probably go down, unemployment will go up, etc.

Iraq / Afghanistan

How will any withdrawal of troops from Iraq and/or Afghanistan go? Will there ever be a full public investigation into the phony WMD claims used to justify the invasion of Iraq?

Pakistan / India

Worsening relations between these two countries could provoke conflict.

Zimbabwe

Incredible inflation, terrible disease, awful leadership. Will Mugabe ever hand over power while he’s alive?

Guantanamo

Currently holding about 250 prisoners of war enemy combatants, whatever that means. Hopefully these men will either be charged and tried in a court of law, or released. Currently about 50-60 detainees have been declared not guilty, but complications over how they are to be repatriated has meant they’re still being held. Maybe Obama will do the decent thing and shut down this prison camp.