Intro

Pay me £121 a month and I will work for you. Honestly, I will. I will do all sorts of things for you. I will look after all that money and make sure it is used in the best way possible. I mean you probably want to make sure that I am doing the work don't you? You don't? You really don't want to check up on me? Ok, that’s weird, but… Thanks. What do you mean that you don't like the way I am doing things and think I could do better? Well, all fairness you don't know what I do or the reasons why I do it. I mean yes, I have made mistakes but that is part of the process of being human. What do you mean it's all my fault? Well maybe if you took the time to check in on me, I would do MORE for you!

Silly isn't it? You pay £121 a month and you never check up on that person. You pay £121 a month and they make all sorts of mistakes and you never correct them. Remind me who your local councilor is? Remind me, how much money was spent on that bus shelter? How much money was used to fix the roads? Why did your council stop the traffic on that road at that time? You see the example above is you and YOUR council. You pay them an amount every month (Mine is £121) and the council uses that money to benefit YOU and manage YOUR area.

Well you never check on what they are doing, do you? I mean I know that you complained about the parking situation in town and I know for a fact that your mate complained about that parking ticket. I know for a FACT that the streets are worse than what they used to be. How do I know all this? They are the same gripes that we all have about our councils and government organisations.

So what are YOU doing to check on them? Well that is where I come in. My name is Jonathan (feel free to call me Jon, everyone else does) and I have been doing some checking on our local council (and other government organisations) here in Wales. You see I don't like that fact that we pay all this money to an organisation and they use it without our checking up on them.

That is where the Freedom of Information act says hello! You see, the Freedom of Information act is YOUR way of finding out why the council (or any other government body) are up to. It is your way of getting a dialog on the reasons that the council do things, and that is worth its weight in gold. We all complain about government bodies, but do we know the reason that they do this?

The freedom of information allows us to find the information out that governments do not want us to find, OR wants us to know (believe me, there is a LOT of information that your government puts out there, you just don't realise it!). It allows us to get information and be able to get an insight into what they are up to.

In this blog I am going to talk a lot about Welsh Government organisations. I wish to point out here and now that the information is STRICTLY non political. I do not care about ideology here, I merely want to find out what the governments are up to and why they are doing it. You can discuss the motives later.

I am going to discuss what I have leartn from making all the FoI requests that I have and some tips on things that YOU can do to make FoI requests because at the end of the day, it's YOUR council, YOUR government, YOUR organisations. They are there for YOU and YOUR benefit. At the same time, it's YOUR duty to find out what they are up to and WHY.

All of the topics that I am writing about here are things that interest me. If you have something that you want me to look into then please feel free to send me an email or a request for me to have a little look at. Believe me, thought, my interests are far and wide.