Consipracy Theories...

Conspiracy theories are amazing. They are an alternative way of looking at the situation and they have a certain way of asking questions that no one else is asking.  My opinion here of conspiracy theories is not something to be discussed here. What is, thought, is why the FoI has done to help develop, or demolish these theories.  I am going to look at a few here because I do think that they would benefit greatly from the various government departments releasing some information to the investigation.  

So a quick little search on “www.whatdotheyknow.com” for Conspiracy showed a smorgesboard of crazyness…  Have a look yourself. Operation Hedgerow?  This one (By a lady who has now had her account suspended, and many more.  So people have used FoI to help try and develop the theory.   The thing about conspiracy theories is not what you can prove, it is about what you cannot disprove.  That is where we have our problem. So the question now remains how can we prove a conspiracy using the FoI act?  Ages back I stated that the FoI is all about looking for files.  

I am only starting with the 11/9 conspiracy purely because it was the first one I looked at.  I will try and cover a wide variety.  So where to start?  A little look at 11/9 on What do they know showed that Jimmy3 had already been doing a bit.  He asked the Home Office, National Counter Terrorism Security Office, Cabinet Office, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for “any information showing evidence that the Foreign Office were aware there was about to be an attack on the twin towers of the USA and of the pentagon in the USA before it happened back on 11th September 2001”.  Of which there was no answer.

So if we are looking for more files on this one, would a more broad net be able to help us?  Instead of asking for a narrow question (As above) how about asking something a little less specific?  Why not ask for all correspondence between one ministry department and another? So I did…  I asked roughly the same question to the Prime Minister’s Office, Metropolitan Police Service, Cabinet Office, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which was:

Please could I have all correspondence made between (Insert Department here) and (Insert Department here).  

At time of writing, they have not yet got back in touch with the matter; which is fine as they are still in compliance on the time frames of the matter. So what else can we do on this matter?  The next are to investigate would be to go into the specific details (Which I will do in the coming weeks \ days \ month \ insert appropriate time frame here).  The thing that makes me think doing this is that we could probably find something that would involve ME in this conspiracy, and all I am is a burke with a love of puzzles and knowledge.  But then again, am I part of the conspiracy (No…  but I would say that wouldn't I!)

This bit was written a little bit after the last section. Some of the above FoI request have been looked at.  Some of them have been answered, with responses that I was not expecting.  These have not been acted upon not because they are part of the conspiracy, but because they are too broad.  If you look through the history of these request they are asking me to narrow it down to confined myself to the working limit of section 16 of the FoI act.  

So it makes me think, how else can we think about this issues of the conspiracy and what will we gather.

Compensation Claims

“Where there’s blame, there’s a claim!” Said one very famous British Advert for Personal Injury claims. In one respect it is a great way of getting money, and also a very painful and dangerous.  There are people who LITERALLY throw themselves in front of cars and drive in front of trucks to get the compensation claims.  IN fact in Russia they advise you to have a camera in your car to help you with claims of compensation. SO why bring this up here?  Well, I got a wondering, how much have local councils in Wales paid out on personal injury claims?  

So I asked all local councils:

1. How many personal injury claims they have had since 2000 (Simply because this was when the FoI act was written)
2. How many were paid out on
3. How much was spent on Personal injury claims (including legal fees and amount given to the claimant)

So here are the results:

Name	Amount tried	Amount paid out on	Amount £ Paid
Blaenau	1161	275	£3,808,851.00
Bridgend	2469	165	£5,473,414.00
Caerphilly	4666	939	£12,289,364.00
Cardiff	9472	2972	£33,618,865.91
Carmarthenshire	1953	474	£6,351,559.00
Ceredigion	124	58	£367,423.78
Conway	667	128	£1,037,543.89
Denbighshire	30	0	£0.00
Flintshire	1629	744	£8,638,157.00
Gwynedd	562	73	£456,288.00
Anglesey	852	249	£2,848,236.00
Merthyr Tydfil	2831	554	£5,687,901.00
Monmouth	624	411	£1,835,502.50
Neath Port Talbot	3943	1099	£13.279.432.77
Newport	3277	1226	£2,286,124.00
Pembroke
Powys	1135	213	£6,172,409.96
RCT
Swansea	5735	1500	£13,596,415

Torfaen	1752	474	£3,343,555.00
Vale Of Glamorgan	2303	766	£10,324,703.18
Wrexham	3156	617	£8,745,552
Total	48341	13554	£126,881,865.22

Now this list has a few things that I want to mention on it. A couple of the council's stated that they only had the information from from 2006 or 2011 (Which is fine). Also there were a number of things that popped up that I really wasn't expecting.  I also asked for a brief overview of some of the different things that people have claimed for.  Fair play they all said the roughly the same thing (Slips, falls, potholes).  

A few of them actually broke them down for me and said a few things I really DIDN'T expect. Caerphilly had a claim for compensation for Joyriding… Your guess is as good as mine over what that means. Ceredigion had one claim for £83,264.35 for tripping into a pothole and £23,294.92 for tripping over a temporary cover.  Cardiff had 1414 for potholes on pavements, but they also had the best of the best claims which was for ”Failure to educate”... So being the curious soul that I am I asked what this means.  Now I am going to just cut and paste the answer to avoid and misrepresentation:

“Generally, these are claims relating to failure to identify that the claimant had dyslexia and they suffered psychologically as a result”

Fair enough.  So why did I ask this? Because this money is something that comes out of your pockets.  It is money that we have paid that is being given for things that the council have “Failed upon”.  Its also something that people think is a good way of making money.  Looking at the stats basically shows than just under three quarters of all claims are failures, but they still cost you.  

Fair enough to give compensation to people for failure in Health and safety, but some of these things were probably not the whole story…

PS I also asked this this question to Brighton and Hove Council too.  Their response is here.

MMR Jabs...

Before I go any further, my objective here is not to promote a point of view, merely discuss what I have found and what has come up from it.  as state many times this is apolitical.  My own views are not going to be represented here.  I write this because this is a topic which does split a lot of people.

Whilst looking through the pile of requests on www.whatdotheyknow.com i started to remember about a man called Andrew Wakefield.  He was the man who made a link between the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.  This claim was discredited later and as a result Andrew Wakefield was stripped of his ability to research medicine again.  The link that he made, however, is still being researched.

Let's have a look at how the researched affected the take up of MMR jabs.  I asked Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Local Health Board, Cwm Taf Local Health Board, Aneurin Bevan Local Health Board, Cardiff and Vale University Local Health Board the same question which was:

1) How many people took the MMR jab in 1993, that where in your authority.

2) How many took took the MMR jab in 1998, that where in your authority.

3) How many took the MMR jab in 2008, that where in your authority.

4) How much money was spent from 1998 until 2008 in promoting the use of the MMR jab

And they all responded in the same way which was ask Public Health Wales Observatory.  So I did.  Here is their response.   It does show the differences in the take up of the MMR vaccine.  I also asked Public Health Wales NHS Trust for some info, but they haven't got back yet, at time of writing.  

SO I also also asked the Department of Health:

1) How much money was spent promoting the MMR jab since 1998

2) how many studies have been conducted into the link between Autism and MMR

3) how many meetings took place in central government concerning the allegation of Andrew Wakeman's paper making a link between autism and MMR.

Which gave me some information about the reports that were made into Andrew Wakefield. They also gave the meeting minutes of the reports into the report too.  The did refer me to Public Health England for the money side of it (Which has yet to get back to me, at time of writing).  .

This only shows the surface level of things thought.  A look through some of the pile of www.whatdotheyknow.com showed that there were other people who had been looking into this matter. Here is a response to one person asking if the people in the Department of health had a vaccine and all the reports into the study of MMR. Here is a request asking how many the the MMR vaccines had a yellow cards (The Yellow Card Scheme is the UK system for collecting and monitoring information on suspected Adverse Drug Reaction [ADR] in association with medicines and vaccines) that was asked to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.  Here is the answer.

Now this isn't the end of the story.  In researching this story, I was contacted by a very nice gentleman named Steve Hinks.  Steve has a daughter which has been adversely affected by vaccines.  As a result he has done a lot of work on vaccines and how they affect people.  Now he has sent me a LOT of documentation on this matter (One document has over 1200 pages).  Now as I have stated to him I am DELIBERATELY not giving my opinion on this matter, or to you. BUt I think that me and Steve Will have beautiful friendship (Judging by the thing that he has already found out).  

PS Have a look at this one

Personal Grievances

There are (At time of writing) 333,221 FoI requests on www.whatdotheyknow.com.  A lot of them are for things which are interesting or help deepen our knowledge of the government and its workings. There are people who use the FoI act, however, for their own personal agenda.  I can understand that because at the end of the day, people have a right to know what their government is doing and why it is doing it.  The thing is when it is used to harass or bully, then this is against the spirit of the law.  

Why am I bringing this up to you?  It’s horrible when you see FOI request like this, it's horrible.  Have a little look at this:

Many of your requests are hostile in nature and within several requests you have made unsubstantiated accusations about Council staff. These are not new allegations and you have now decided to continue your campaign through FOI, despite the Council responding to your accusations outside of the Act. Your requests have also been made through the `What Do they Know' website and can be viewed by anyone who has access to the Internet. It is unfair and distressing for Council staff to have unreasonable allegations made about them in public. The Council has in the past had inflammatory remarks by you about Council staff removed from the Internet. So you are well aware that the Council does not tolerate this yet you continue to do so.

Why do people think that council workers are immune from criticism? Why is the FoI being abused for this?  I mean don't get me wrong, if the question was how many complaints had been made then game on, but this is something else. This one, is pretty horrible. Unqualified use of judges as psychologists?  What are thinking of?

Have a look at this.  Asking if the council had paid money to make a case go away?  Ok, it's understandable in one respect (Because if there was an issue or bribery then it needs to be found), but look further down the request and you can see the venom in the request.  Surely there should be something that stops this sort of thing?

How about this guy?  Now, don't get me wrong, I love birds as much as the next person, but this sort of request doesn't help anyone except the person making it.  If you have a look at the attached\similar request attached to this as well, they are pretty horrible. You need to think what is this for?  

The reason that I am writing this is simple. I do truly believe that democracy works only if everyone is involved.  The FoI act was written to find out what is going on in the democratic process. Why are people using this to further their own agenda. If they want this information then there are better ways of getting it OR a much easier way than the deliberate and pointed ways that this occurs.

Here are a list of different account\requests that are inappropriate here, here, here,  and here.

Gulf War Medicine

Out troops are some of the best in the world and they should be looked after with trust, love, and respect.  The things that they have seen and done are mind blowing, and we should never forget that.  So finding out how we treat them is a very important issue and it is something that we remember it.  Veterans were given huge amount of vaccines, which in some respects have affected them adversely to the point where some of them suffer from something commonly known as “Gulf War Syndrome” (Here is the government response).  As a result this post is about the investigations that have been done into what has caused this condition.

A brief look through the www.whatdotheyknow.com pile showed that people have been looking into this.  A full list of vaccines has been asked for, but was considered too much work to get hold of. This is still under internal review, so it might be a case of  this information get released. A slightly different request might give us some more light on this matter.  Whilst the Ministry of Defence didn't hold the list of the Organophosphates that were used as part of the immunisation programme, they did provide the evidence of where they can be found. Another list of vaccines given to troops is found here (Ignore the refused thing, it's listed in the national archives.  Check the attachment)  It does strike me how much information is in the public domain on this one.  I mean look at the attachment on this FoI request.  Thats a lot of information.

There is a heck of a lot of information released on this.  It does strike me that when the entire details of a study are released , how much information there is. This study, I haven't read, purely because it wouldn't open on my computer, but it shows that there are questions being answered.  Here is a bank copy of the consent forms and where they are being kept, Here is a list of the Portadown records requests (or not).  I don't quite understand the reason why the significance of manufacturer of the Pertussis Vaccine being notified of use in Gulf war is important, but the response on this is here.  Here is the response from  the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency.

So what about specifics of what was in the inoculations? What do we know was in these injections. We know for a fact that Aluminium Hydroxide wasn’t used in some vaccines but was used to protect from Anthrax.  Nagalase wasn't used. Thimerosal was used

This is an emotive issue, and if you read the comments made on a lot of the different requests, you can see that there is a lot of mixed emotions.  Have a look at this request and this request if you don't believe me. Here is the MoD response to crown immunity.  Again, strong language.

There are a LOT of requests on this matter.  I have only brought the main points that are the most interesting to this point. The question is, however, what else is being held?  Is there anything else?  What else can we find out on the matter.  How else can we look at this matter.

Interesting stuff, eh?