The Wardman Wire

I’ve been planning to write an article about the latest attempt to hide MPs correspondence , but this got in the way while I was looking for material.

A Lion among Tabby Cats

Simon Hughes made a fantastic contribution to defeat David Maclean’s Private Member’s Bill a few weeks ago - I listened to the debate on BBC Parliament at the time.

Search me not

But, when I started digging around on Simon Hughes’ website to find the speech, I ran up against the search facility.

Try “Freedom of Information“:

Search Results
Your search has produced 288 result(s).
For the best results it is recommended that you avoid common words such as ‘Simon’ or ‘Hughes’ in your search enquiry.

Hmmm. Double check. Correct spelling. “Freedom of Information” does not include “Simon” or “Hughes”. Try again.

Let’s see, Try “David Maclean“:

Search Results
Your search has produced 288 result(s).
For the best results it is recommended that you avoid common words such as ‘Simon’ or ‘Hughes’ in your search enquiry.

Hmmm. Hmmm. Let’s try something that should be common on Simon Hughes’ website.

For example, Let’s try “Bermondsey“.

Search Results
Your search has produced 288 result(s).
For the best results it is recommended that you avoid common words such as ‘Simon’ or ‘Hughes’ in your search enquiry.

This is ridiculous. We need to do some extreme niche searching here, just to be sure. Has Mr Hughes made a speech about Mary Poppins, perhaps?

Try: “supercalifragilisticexpialidoceous”

Search Results
Your search has produced 288 result(s).
For the best results it is recommended that you avoid common words such as ‘Simon’ or ‘Hughes’ in your search enquiry.

Apparently he has made 288 speeches about Mary Poppins … remarkable - even for a Lib Dem.

Just to do a belt and braces check, head over to They Work for You to check Hansard:

Your search for items containing the word ’supercalifragilisticexpialidoceous’ did not match anything in Hansard.

I therefore conclude that Simon Hughes website has a technical problem, and I am therefore unable to source the speech for which I wish to pay him a huge compliment.

Life’s a bitch sometimes.

Please let me complete the compliment

If Mr Hughes would fix his site search, and confirm it here, I will be delighted to link to the speech, and complete the compliment.

In the meantime, I will return to this pernicious little bill to hide information that should be freely available later this afternoon. And I encourage all my fellow bloggers to turn up the heat on this.

(On a side note, why does the Independent website not have a favicon - unlike the Telegraph ).

Tags: david maclean, freedom of information, restriction of mp expenses, hiding of information, simon hughes mp, liberal democrats, parliament, house of commons, bad blogging ideas, simon hughes website, mary poppinslibdemvoice, libdemvoice.org, libdemblogs, libdemblogs.co.uk

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