MPs' Expenses (redux)

So this is the version they were prepared to let you see...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/gallery/2009/jun/18/mps-expenses-
houseofcommons?picture=349037860

 

"They just don't get it, do they?"

I liked this bit in the main report:

"The expenses claims and supporting receipts feature large blacked-out
areas where it is not always clear what has been obscured."

Well, duh!

 

Given that most of the MPs who've fallen on swords did so as a result of
property-related shenanigans, none of which would have been revealed by
the data they've released, it's something of a pisstake.

I remember a load of stuff released by (iirc) the US Gov't which was in
PDF format with areas blacked out. Except it was still there and could
be revealed by clicking and dragging to highlight the text. Fail!

 

Champ will be along shortly to say it's all a storm in a tea cup )

heh.

Another highlight from the Grauniad blog is:

"In 2005 George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, claimed £47 for two
copies of a DVD of his own speech on 'Value for Taxpayers Money'."

 

The FIA did that with the McLaren spygate documents.

 

Nah, I've given up that dead horse.

I'm not sure whether it's reasonable or not to obscure MPs' personal
addresses from publication.

 

I can understand the superficial rationale for doing so, but anyone who
really wanted an MP's address could almost certainly find it by other
means and, as mentioned, concealing addresses hides a whole load of
murky dealings which the Telegraph successfully exposed.

 

Possibly the same one I'm thinking of was a word doc which retained all
the corrections underneath, detailing what *really* happened at some
incidents in Iraq.

 

There was one where history got left on, so all deletions and changes
could be seen