Diane’s agility course manoeuvres coming along nicely. 😀
And brilliant to see Sophie racing happily round. Hope she’s feeling considerably better now.

Full details of the poll here: ico.org.uk/media/about-...

Ducks: good.
No ducks: bad.

Great decision Rory and your piece setting out your reasons is really compelling. I hope that all your (and Sophie's!) Twitter followers do just that - follow you to Bluesky.

The perfect end to 2024. Thank you Rory for sustaining all these updates about the incomparable Sophie. They mean so much to thousands of us. Wishing you, Diane, Sophie & Si a 2025 full of positive experiences x

FOI material is in these newly available files (I might have missed some others)
cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/re...
cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/re...
cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/re...
cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/re...
cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/re...

The papers also reveal how in 2003 the constitutional affairs minister Lord Falconer pressed Blair to strengthen FOI (unsuccessfully) - by abolishing the ministerial right to veto disclosures, releasing cabinet minutes after a few weeks & cabinet documents after 5 years, etc

Some years ago ACPO played a useful role in coordinating police forces on FOI. As a journalist I found ACPO generally helpful & willing to engage constructively with requesters. But since ACPO became the NPCC, the overall FOI performance of police forces has got much worse and is often dreadful.

The latest quarterly FOI stats for UK central govt are available at www.gov.uk/government/s...

One govt organisation not lying comfortably in a tepid bath is the National Archives, whose FOI operation still appears to be drowning in the icy waters of a flood of requests for military personnel records which it can't cope with effectively.

If you are interested in taking an FOI case to the First-tier Tribunal, there is a chapter devoted entirely to this with detailed and thorough advice in my book, Freedom of Information - A practical guidebook - www.amazon.co.uk/Freedom-Info...

Full details on my website: rosenbaum.org.uk/foi-tribunal...
Or Substack: rosenbaum6.substack.com/p/foi-tribun...