When the nutter is right
A friend works in a council department, and comes across all these kinds of complaints all the time. The stories are the same, but they've been much quicker to ban the idiots from contacting council staff.

But on one occassion, this friend was gutted, because a renowned nutter had stumbled across a genuine problem, using FoI legislation. Basically, a badly drafted contract years ago meant that they had to let a developer develop some land that had been granted to the council by a charity, without getting a share of the profits.

Obviously, everyone in the council was mortified, but the fact that the query came from a nutter meant that it was quite easily 'forgotten about' by the council. Not even dealt with in a no-blame way.

So it's not just the monetary costs of these fools which is a problem, but the fact that they *can* make a smokescreen for real issues and prevent councils being held properly to account (which is after all what FoI was about).

Length - dealt with within the statutory twenty days
(cheesehead, Sat 6 Sep 2008, 10:08, Reply)