Glasgow - Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam
I thought my days of arguing with Glasgow City Council about 'Spam' were well and truly over, but I was wrong.
More to follow, but in the meantime here's a reminder from the blog site archive of my previous encounter with Glasgow City Council and - Spam, Spam, Spam Spam.
Glasgow - Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam (15/12/18)
My latest FOI row with senior officials in Glasgow revolves around the City Council's internet watchdog turning my emails into 'spam'.
Now you've got to laugh at this nonsense because I've used the same email account for many years and never experienced any such problems.
But to celebrate the complete absurdity of it all here's the classic 'Spam sketch' from Monty Python featuring: Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Michael Palin.
Glasgow - Excuses, Excuses (11/12/18)
Now I've heard some lame excuses in my time, as have most people, but the fabled 'the dog ate my homework' must be up there amongst the most ridiculous of them all including 'a big boy did it and ran away'.
Yet this is, effectively, what Glasgow City Council are saying about an important FOI Review Request I submitted back on 9 November 2017 regarding missing Minutes of the Corporate Management Team.
Now I've used the same email account for years and never had any problems.
In fact, I've been using my AOL (Compuserve) email server for all my FOI dealings with Glasgow City Council, but all of a sudden the IT department is claiming that my email letter of 9 November was treated as 'spam' by the council's cyber watchdog.
"Email received 08/12/17 from the Council’s IT Department
"I’ve had a look into this and I can confirm it was received however, the email was quarantined as spam; normally you would receive a notification for this but as it was sent to a generic mailbox, you wouldn’t have.
"The message is held for a maximum of 14 days and then deleted. I’ve added the mailbox to a group which allows you to receive notification when a quarantined spam email is received; the mailbox will receive a digest at 10am, 1pm and 4pm (if any further quarantined mail has been received).
"This issue occurred due to the way compuserve.com manage their outgoing mail."
Without a word of apology, the City Council goes on to say that my FOI Review Request will have to start all over again which is really quite bizarre, given that I have no responsibility for the council's internet security.
So I will be writing to Glasgow's chief executive to insist that the missing Corporate Management Team minutes be released immediately, otherwise I will pursue an appeal and complaint to the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC).
Glasgow City Council is, of course, Scotland's largest and best resourced local council with a budget of £1.5 billion pounds a year.
Glasgow, FoI and Equal Pay (24/11/17)
Here's an FoI Review request I've submitted to Glasgow City Council which I have raised because I am dissatisfied at the way in which senior officials 'answered' my original request for information.
As regular readers know, the City Council refused to answer a previous FoI request on the grounds of cost, but on this occasion they claim the information I requested (CMT minutes) were only produced from 2010 onwards.
Yet in the very first 'Minute' of 5 January 2010 Item 2 records that the 'note' of the previous meeting from 24 November 2009 was 'agreed as an accurate record'
Now I know I'm not stupid and I know that readers of the blog site don't think I'm stupid, but senior officials at Glasgow City Council must think I'm stupid - because why else would they come up with such a dumb response?
I sent my Review Request letter by email to Carole Forrest on 9 November 2017, but haven't heard a 'cheep' out of the Council since then.
I find that quite astonishing, I have to say, because the council is clearly telling me 'porkies' about the minute-taking practices at GCC while also withholding other documents which should have been provided in response to my original FoI request.
Is this good local government, is Glasgow really committed to culture of 'openness and transparency' over its pay arrangements?
Not so far, if you ask me.
