What a GREAT idea! Good on the Guardian for doing this. And you're right. What we call this new form of journalism doesn't matter. That something new is emerging which involves the wider community does. Now THAT's citizen engagement!
Saskboy
· 6 months ago
This is so cool.
Anthony
· 6 months ago
what the Guardian is doing is interesting but its not the whole picture. The Guardian now has access to the same heavily censored documents all the media have but for the past 6 weeks one newspaper the Telegraph has had the unedited data . They kept it to themselves releasing it in drips , breaking the scandal and being in total control of the UK news agenda for the past month. They hugely increased their circulation, online presence and general brand. Its not worth any media paying journos to go through censored data in the hope of now finding something the Telegraph missed so this is an interesting solution for the Guardian and a way of getting some nice online buzz. But its naive to think that if the Guardian had had what the Telegraph had they wouldnt have done exactly the same. Its hardly a revolution in journalism - the fact is a newspaper did " devote the resources to searching through " all the data and reaped the rewards.
Conrad Barwa
· 6 months ago
I think you are getting excited over nothing here. Much of the hard work has already been done by the FIA campaigners and it was the Torygraph that investigated and exposed a lot of the more egregious scams weeks if not months ago.
Also it isn't as if anyone needs to wade through every single of the 700,000 documents. There are aggregate ... Read moreindicators for each MP and how much they claim in a year - so if a single backbench MP is claiming thousands of pounds in a year then you can investigate further. What has really got peoples' goat is the abuse of the second homes allowance and the flipping of homes desginated under such a label by MPs.. There is a maximum claimable under this category of £20-30,000 per year and it is relatively easy to go through the list of MPs to see who is claiming the maximum or near maximum year after year. Some like Hazel Blears who claimed the maximum permissible every single year, despite several changes of address, clearly did so to exploit the fullamount they could be reimbursed for, rather than actually claim their real expenses.
Also I don't think the trap MPs were relying on was to hide behind a sea of data; if you followed the case properly, yo would know that they actually fought the release of the details and when they lost this legal battle in court are only officially releasing them... Read more though the Parliamentary offices with key details redacted - this makes determing abuse of certain allowances like the second homes allowance almost impossible to determine as the addresses are blacked out etc.
The Torygraph will be publishing a separate magazine pull out on Saturday which will have the aggregate figures and breakdown by category for every single MP.
All Comments
Also it isn't as if anyone needs to wade through every single of the 700,000 documents. There are aggregate ... Read moreindicators for each MP and how much they claim in a year - so if a single backbench MP is claiming thousands of pounds in a year then you can investigate further. What has really got peoples' goat is the abuse of the second homes allowance and the flipping of homes desginated under such a label by MPs.. There is a maximum claimable under this category of £20-30,000 per year and it is relatively easy to go through the list of MPs to see who is claiming the maximum or near maximum year after year. Some like Hazel Blears who claimed the maximum permissible every single year, despite several changes of address, clearly did so to exploit the fullamount they could be reimbursed for, rather than actually claim their real expenses.
Also I don't think the trap MPs were relying on was to hide behind a sea of data; if you followed the case properly, yo would know that they actually fought the release of the details and when they lost this legal battle in court are only officially releasing them... Read more though the Parliamentary offices with key details redacted - this makes determing abuse of certain allowances like the second homes allowance almost impossible to determine as the addresses are blacked out etc.
The Torygraph will be publishing a separate magazine pull out on Saturday which will have the aggregate figures and breakdown by category for every single MP.