Scientology

I want to point out that this is totally apolitical.  I know the the Church of Scientology has a lot of controversy around it and that what is said about that is extreme.  In this post I am ONLY looking at what has been found by FoI requests. Nothing more. So let's begin; The Church of Scientology has a long and colourful past around the world.  A lot of people have looked at things that the church have done and tried to find out what and how they have affected the UK government.  Let's see what's been asked!

A look through the pile brought up something rather interesting.  A lot of results came up about business rates and Complete Non-Residential / Business Property Rates Data (have a look if you don't believe me).  Someone asked a few local councils for “a complete and up-to-date list of all business (non-residential) property rates data for your local authority”, and a lot of results popped up for Scientology and a few in really unexpected places, like this one asking about a town centers redevelopment project.  So the question is, why?  Have a look through the request, it only shows who’s in which areas.

So what about a request to find all meeting with Scientologists?  Refused by the home office, i’m afraid.  I think that this was only because it was too big.  Maybe others may be able to help figure this one out…  

There are a LOT of request which are very pointed - and some which are borderline offensive - request which try to probe the deeper actions of the church, such as this one about the benefit to the public of their services. This one thought is an interesting one as it asked the charity commission about the communications that it has had with the church. This one is offensive, slightly, in the way that it is written. As stated before, the FoI is not there to probe your own person grievances.

Ok, the main reasons that I wrote this was because I was amazed at how broad the FoI can be and how you can find a lot more about a group, or organisation than you realised.  It amazed me still how much information you can get your hands on.  By looking through the requests about, I figured out you can find most of where the church's main interests are and which buildings they occupy.  Didn't think that did you kids?  Not only that I think that you can probably find out most about what their charity contributions are.

I also wrote this because it is also annoying how many people use the FoI to advance their own agenda. Regardless of your personal opinions, the information should be gathered, and asked for, respectfully. This one for example, is a pretty good example of how to get information respectfully (The annotations are not so respectful…)