Slashdot Mirror
Newspaper Crowdsources 700,000-Page Investigation of MP Expenses
projector writes with an interesting project from the UK: "The Guardian are crowd-sourcing the investigation of 700,000 pages of UK MPs' expenses data. Readers are being invited to categorize each document, transcribe the handwritten expenses details into an online form and alert the newspaper if any claims merit further investigation. 'Some pages will be covering letters, or claim forms for office stationery. But somewhere in here is the receipt for a duck island. And who knows what else may turn up. If you find something which you think needs further attention, simply hit the button marked "investigate this!" and we'll take a closer look.'"
Do I need to say more?
Yup, and the job of those who oversee and regulate these things is to prevent abuse, so that the same rules that apply when I fill out my tax forms apply to the people that devise the laws that underpin that tax form.
Clearly the solution is to build a massive database monitoring Parliment then lose it in the middle of Trafalgar Square!
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Why don't our corporate controlled, drug-addled newspapers act like their British counterparts?
Ours is a direct republic, so in theory, our press must be more active in exposing the illegal, false and corrupt expense accounts of the numerous Ted Stevens clones that walk the same halls that Lincoln and Jackson walked.
Why don't our media have a daily expose show at 7 PM detailing the latest claims our diseased congressmen and senators claim as expenses?
British press is so Cool!
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
There is a saying "who will guard the guards". Nobody apparently.
The Guardian guards the guards apparently.
As it happens though the claim for the duck island does not appear in the official expenses data as it's blacked out along with, I would guess, almost anything else likely to cause embarrassment for the MP.
Apparently once the fees office had blacked out the bits they didn't think the public should see the MPs had several months to look at their own claims and recommend any other sections they didn't think should be public so when you look at the actual claims, and some MPs are much worse than others, there is an awful lot you can't see.
What really pisses me off is the string of MPs saying
"Well my claim was completely within the rules and I have done nothing wrong however I now realise the rules were horribly wrong and fundamentally flawed so what we need to do is change the rules to make them stricter."
No ! What you need to do is behave in an honest and honourable fashion and not try to screw the system for as much as you think you can get away with.
But I'm pretty sure that almost ANYONE in their shoes would have done the same...it's called the human condition. You are given the power to abuse something and you think nobody will notice....so you do. Flame away but i probably would have.
Categorize this as flaming if you wish, but that is exactly the kind of reasoning unscrupulous people use to justify continuing violation of moral and legal conventions. Other variations include but are not limited to "don't hate the player, hate the game" and "screw or be screwed". All amount to the same thing, and all are inexcusable. Believe it or not, the majority of people entrusted with power over the lives of others live up to the minimal expectation that this trust will not be broken. The word that describes this is integrity, and no amount of fallacious reasoning will erase the fact that you lack it.
Trust me, kids; don't drink and post.
The mySociety folk that created TheyWorkForYou, PledgeBank and others have their own MP expenses site and also want your help. See here: http://whattheyclaimed.com/
Anyone who has seen the expenses will know that the important stuff is all blanked out.
There are pages that are entirely black in there.
There are pages that say things like:
"Dear xx, here is your invoice of £2,500 for the following work:" ...and then everything below it blanked out.
The BBC had a copy of Gordon Brown's uncensored expenses document and compared it to the official version. The uncensored version said "£99.00 Sky TV", the censored version just said "£99.00".
The whole thing is a farce, we need to get the uncensored version - there was suggestion yesterday the Telegraph who obtained the leaked uncensored versions would release them to the public today but I've heard nothing more since.
There are some gems in the official version, under MP Ian Cawsey's expenses I noticed he'd sponsored a local football team £300, and then charged the tax payer for that sponsorship via the expenses system, but I feel if we start this now we'll only need to start right over when we do finally get hold of the uncensored version.
I suppose there's an argument finding breaches in the official release will allow us to apply more pressure to get the uncensored version though maybe? I'd have thought people's time would be better spent actually pressuring for the release though of the uncensored versions overall and then do something like this.
Still, good work to the Guardian for working with what we have at least, you can't fault them for that.
I commend the idea and the effort. But there are 700,000 documents, each with how many pages each? It's an interesting idea but will the crowd's enthusiasm hold up?
Each doc is usually around 1-5 pages - but there's so much redaction it's almost worthless (have a peek here). As to the crowd's enthusiasm - I can't see it waning unless the govmt get another crisis to hide this behind. Most folks want to see a significant change in the way MPs are paid, and this really kicked the Labour party in the knackers at the recent local & European elections (admittedly it may have been more akin to kicking them while they were down, what with the current PM being as charismatic as month old roadkill, and the Iraq war being such a success).
-- Intelligence is soluble in alcohol
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it already is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M for those who'd like to see the original
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
It's one of the more reputable newspapers in Britain. Has a moderate left wing stance and a well educated readership.
"Also, the Guardian's claim that there's a receipt for a duck-house in there is false, as that claim was rejected and no rejected claims have been released officially."
The Guardian doesn't make that claim, the summary does. The Gaurdian actually backs up your statement that it was rejected...
"...he admitted claiming £1,645 for a floating "duck island" in his garden...[snip]...a claim for a floating duck island designed to protect his ducks from foxes. This was rejected by the Commons authorities."
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That depends on your political perception. It is registered as supporting the Labour Party. The same Labour Party that is doing the redacting here.
Maybe their online presence is different, but I subscribe to the Guardian's RSS feed and in recent months they've been much more harsh on the current government than I would have been. They've also been running articles claiming that the Labour party has abandoned its roots and the people it is supposed to represent. Maybe they are supporting the Labour Party in the abstract, but they certainly aren't supporting the current Labour leadership; even the BBC has been more moderate in their attacks on the government, and attacking the government is practically the official hobby of the BBC.
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He's a politician, that sounds like a genuine work expense.