Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

I am due to hear from North Lanarkshire again on Monday 2nd February 2015 the date by which the has to disclose the information so ordered by the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC).  Yet again North Lanarkshire argued that the release of these details would be 'prejudicial to the effective conduct of public affairs', but SIC gave the Council's case short shrift and agreed with me that this was nonsense. I said to SIC at the time that North Lanarkshire was really just trying to shield senior officials from proper scrutiny and I think I've been proved right. So let's see what arrives on Monday - I can hardly wait.   NLC and FOI (4 December 2014) The Scottish Information Commissioner has been in touch to confirm that an appeal I registered against North Lanarkshire Council will now proceed to a formal investigation. As regular readers know this involved a refusal by the Council to release details of an email setting out the extent of the con...

More good news from North Lanarkshire! The Council has just lost another appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) who has upheld my case that North Lanarkshire was not entitled to withhold the details of a 'consultation' between the Council's head of human resources, Iris Wylie, and trade unions over an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) connected to the Council's job evaluation scheme (JES) and new local pay arrangements. I have to say I find it amazing that the senior officials of the Council who have made such a mess of equal pay going back over 12 years should have been getting paid big performance bonuses - for performing well in the already highly paid posts all this time. Here's the full decision of the Scottish Information Commissioner and I think it lends weight to the argument that   an independent investigation over North Lanarkshire Council's behaviour in relation to local pay arrangements is long overdue. ...

Janan Ganesh writing in The Financial Times doubts the ability of the Labour Party to govern the UK effectively and that if elected, the leadership would simply collapse under the strain of having to balance the nation's spending books.  I suspect he's right you know and it will be interesting to see how many voters come around to the same opinion between now and polling day on 7th May 2015.      Austerity will break any Labour government By Janan Ganesh - The Financial Times Party’s votes are already floating to leftwing alternatives, and this is before Ed Miliband has made a single cut ©PA A And now they have it. For five years British leftwingers awaited a popular reaction against austerity, one that moved beyond protest to something with governing potential. Their dream was a homegrown revolution but, as ever, the British masses were a terrible disappointment to them. So they looked to the continent. Los Indignados seemed to peter out in Spain. Then ...

The Guardian reports on the public inquiry into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a crime which could only have been committed by people with access to the kind of high-level, high-tech support that is normally the preserve of  national Governments. The main suspect in the case, Andrej Lugovoi, was taken under the protective wing of Vladimir Putin when he returned to Russia and quickly became an the equivalent of an MP in the Russian Duma (national Parliament) which means he cannot under any circumstances be extradited to the UK.  So it will be interesting to see if Andrej Lugovoi and Dimitry Kovtun give evidence to the public inquiry by video link. Litvinenko postmortem ‘most dangerous ever in western world’ Inquiry hears from lead pathologist who examined Russian’s body after his death from polonium-210 poisoning in 2006 The postmortem examination of the body of Alexander Litvinenko was “one of the most dangerous postmortems ever unde...

In this comment piece from The Guardian Paul Mason lays the blame for Greece's economic mess with a handful of tax-evading oligarchs. Now I'm sure these guys have a lot to answer for, but the reality is that the well-off Greek middle classes have been avoiding their fair share of taxes for years as well and if you ask me, it's naive to suggest that after Syriza has brought a few wealthy individuals to book, all will be well again. I remember watching a TV programme by the former MP Michael Portillo at the time Greece was forced to go cap in hand to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, otherwise the lights would have been switched off.  Portillo interviews the owner of a small family plumbing business who had bought himself a fancy Porsche as a company car which was worth somewhere in the region of 75,000 Euros.  Worse was to follow as the chap had also purchased another 4 cars through the business, not v...

Here's an interesting 'tidbit' from the BBC regarding the politics of Greece - one of the five major policy priorities of Syriza which is the largest party of the new Greek Government. Apparently Syriza is intent on scrapping a unpopular property tax known as 'Enfia' which sounds a bit like the Council Tax in the UK which helps to pay for a whole range of local services. But in place of Enfia there will apparently be a new tax levied on luxury homes, of which there will be relatively few, and only larger second properties, presumably because so many Greeks (like so Spaniards, French and Italians) have second or 'holiday' homes.   So as the BBC says, it seems that Syriza are not just representing the less well off in Greece, but the interests of the second-home-owning relatively well off middle classes as well - which is not how things look from the outside, of course. BBC News  Scrapping of property tax  It is not just the poor who voted for S...

Labour's very own Billy Bunter has been on the TV this week making claims about a Tory politician from the Thatcher era, Leon Brittan. Now as far as I can tell the allegations being made behind the scenes, by as yet unnamed people, are already under investigation by the police who presumably don't require the MP's help in conducting their enquiries. I don't know the man personally, but Watson gives me the impression of being a very odd individual whose interest in these matters is intensely party political whereas it ought to be about doing the right thing.            Awesome, Dude! (8 July 2013) Have you ever read a more embarrassing letter than this resignation letter from Tom Watson MP - to the Labour leader Ed Miliband? Sycophantic and self-serving were the words that came to mind as I was asked to believe that Tom's resignation had nothing to do with the Unite vote rigging scandal in Falkirk - yet ...