Julian Assange

I don't know what your opinion of him is (And to be honest I don't care, either), all I know is still inside the of Ecuadorian embassy in London.  He is a controversial character, heralded as a purveyor of truth in some quarters, and a national menace is others. All I know his, him being in the embassy is costing us money.  This means that it is something that interests me. Again this is apolitical, my personal opinions about this situation are not of any interest to me.

Our starter for ten, how much did the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) spend on patrolling Assange from 19/06/12 to 28/01/13?  £2.3 million.  That a heck of a lot of money. That includes overtime and normal spending.  Is it worth it?  Your choice. It does show, thought, how much it costs to patrol an area for 6 months, however.

There are a lot of different requests concerning the amount that that has been spent on the Julian Situation, but a more uptodate request shows some of the breakdown of the costs involved in the detention of Julian.  You can find the response here. The interesting this is in the response the MPS stated that they will give more information at a later date. The same response was given to another request of a similar nature here.

This one is a bit too broad.  If you think about it, “All information”, could include anything. I am going to think about how to reword this to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (‘Cause it’s cool).  Don't know what it will turn up, but that’s half the fun, isnt it?

What do the police say about this issue?  Well two requests have been made on this one.  After a LOT of clarification (And a lot of going back and forth) this one was refused. I can understand why, because it was a bit too broad, but then again, how to change that?  Try again on a slightly different front? Now this latest one was a bit more successful due to the limited nature of what it is asking for.  It does give us some of the tactical plan and a power point.  Nice eh?

What about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?  They gave some details of what they have been up to. It isnt everything that was asked for, but it's there, none the less. Also, this one shows who wrote the letter regarding the Ecuador threat (Badly spelt at the beginning, but who cares).

Now this is a massive topic (A look here shows what people have done) and even Julian Legal system (Find it here) have done a lot on this topic.  This maybe another area to investigate later on in the year as this is again a topic that I have only had 500 words to write about.

PS, I loved this one and this one - It goes to show that there are even more topics to look at when we get on this bandwagon. Nice eh?