Whoever said that there's no smoke without fire, never heard of a smoke machine...

Sometimes doing this job I get blind alleys and things that distract me.  For example, when I asked the foreign office for help getting information on how to trade weapons, informed me that I had the wrong department.  Due to the the amazing section 16, however there is no such thing as a total blind alley.  That doesn't mean that you don't get people trying to pull the wool over your eyes; it’s almost a case of smoke and mirrors.

As I was investigating Cardiff DPRTE, this became more and more apparent.  When you are investigating an arms fair, it seems that people are not that interested in giving you that much information. Now the fair was in Cardiff, so wouldn't it be logical to ask Cardiff Council what they have done for this arms fair?  Now I got a bit suspicious when they contacted me back and asked for the specific departments I was refering too.  When I asked for all of them they got back in touch with me to say that this would have been too much work for them.  

As explained previously the cost of getting an FoI cannot exceed £650 to get.  So why did they want the specific departments?  The cynic in me says to make sure that it was to made the request to wide to get or to specific; the realist in me says because they needed it to  narrow it for my benefit. Not only that but I sent an FoI request to South Wales Police and they NEVER got back to me.

So who to go to next?  Well I thought that I would go straight to the horse's mouth and ask some of the defence organisations attached. So the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, Crown Commercial Service, & Export Credits Guarantee Department (They all had a stand in the fair) were contacted about their involvement in the fairs. The first question is, which governmental organisations they contact on the matter?  The Export Credits Guarantee Department did not attend; interesting. Crown Commercial Service have yet to get back in touch with me (At time of writing). A query about the Defence Infrastructure Organisation's publicity of the event has yet to be answered either.  

Shouldn't these organisation, who are organisations the event, have more information about their event?  I mean they aren't the ones who are doing this?  The Ministry of Defence are the ones who are the most interested in selling the arms (Or the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) who would be interested.  As it is a defence matter, sure one of the  defence companies has some knowledge of this event?  No Smoke without fire.

The issue is that one of my FoI requests came back in a rather unexpected fashion.  You see, I asked the Defence Infrastructure Organisation which governmental organisations they have dealt with in regard to the Cardiff DPRTE… You know, because is would show the web of who is in “In charge” of the event…  And they refered me to BIP Solutions… Eh?  Who are they?  It turns out that:

[They are for] effective and efficient procurement of goods and services can benefit government, people and businesses. [Their] goal is to support and improve every stage of this vital supply chain process through the development of skills, knowledge and cutting-edge technology.

So it appears that the MoD (and other related departments) are not involved.   Well, that is a whole new heap of FoI requests with that one!  You see, there’s me thinking that the MoD would have done this event. No smoke without fire…. But it turns out that the smoke was from the smoke machine, rather than the fire.  Whoever said that there's no smoke without fire, never heard of a smoke machine...