Quote:
Originally Posted by claytonender
Andrew -I know you have explained that you requested the information for 2007-2008 as it was the last year that information was available for - however if you were doing a piece of research, surely you would need previous years to compare the information too. As just the figures for the one year would not really prove anything - it would not show whether the expenses had increased or decreased, if one person appeared to be claiming more (or less) than previously, which are surely very important in properly conducted research. Before you try to negate my assertions - I was once a student - so I do know about research - but maybe students of history are taught to be more methodical in their research methods than students of politics.
As for politics of hatred - you need to look no further than the present controlling group on hyndburn council - who over the last few weeks have gone out of their way in public meetings (the last planning meeting being one of them) to verbally abuse and discredit Graham. In fact the outburst at the last planning meeting was even more ironic, because the chief instigator of the abuse actually left the meeting early - very ironic as they had accused Graham of leaving the meeting (between items on the agenda) and showing disrepect to the meeting. Ok Graham had left the room -but no one tried to find out why - he might have only needed to use the toilet.
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Claytonender I've already explained that even if I wasn't doing it for university research, I think freedom of information is a perfectly legitimate thing to request, without having a backlash from councillors on a public website. I got a sample of 2007-2008 to see if it would be useful (not that I should have to explain myself), thus far I can't see a place for including the expenses information anyway, it's not as useful as I thought it might be, as the sample is so small because most councillors do not need to claim.
I haven't been at the planning meetings, but if the controlling group have been abusing Graham then that's wrong. There is no reason why Graham should come here and abuse and discredit a member of the public though, it's not justifiable. Perhaps Peter and Graham are as bad as each other, I don't know, what I do know is it's Graham who's then going on to try to discredit me, which is especially surprising if he doesn't like it being done to him at council.