Tagged: sheffield star
Going up, going down: The end of the of the football season in newspaper front pages
Nobody covers a football club quite like the local newspaper. The highs and the lows, the frustrations and the delights (with the sports desk normally being blamed for the former by readers, but rarely thanked for the latter). So it’s no surprise that when the not-quite-life-and-death matters of promotion and relegation are dealt with, the football normally passes from the back page to the front page.
With the last play off in the bag (well done Crewe), here’s a round-up of how regional papers covered the success, or otherwise, of their teams
Premier League
Champions: Manchester City
Title: Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Premier League
18th place (relegated): Bolton
Title: Bolton News
Praying for a miracle before the game … The Bolton News
and after…
… and after relegation was confirmed
Premier League
19th place (relegated): Blackburn
Title: Lancashire Telegraph
The Lancashire Telegraph
Premier League
20th place (relegated): Wolves
Titles: Birmingham Mail and the Wolverhampton Express and Star
The Black Country edition of the Birmingham Mail
And the Express and Star
FOI Friday: Problem families, housing benefit cheats, kids in cells and unsolved crimes
1. How many ‘problem families’ have moved into your area?
It’s not often it’s worth flagging up an FOI request before a result has come back, but this is a little different. The Ledbury Reporter newspaper reports on how Ledbury Town Council is trying to find out how many ‘problem families’ have been allocated housing in the town from outside the area. According to the council, such allocations take place under an arrangement called the Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements.
2. Youth clubs which close too early
A little different, but fascinating all the same. Are councils doing enough to keep young people out of trouble in the evening? I suppose it depends on your view as to whether it is a council’s job to keep young people out of trouble. The Evening Standard clearly thought so, asking all councils for the opening and closing times of youth clubs. Most close before 7pm – just before the time of day when young people are, according to the paper, most likely to commit crime.
Ok, so we’ve seen this FOI before, but if ever there was proof that just because it’s been done somewhere else shouldn’t mean you don’t do it as well, it’s this. The Birmingham Mail asked the question of the number of weapons seized at courts. The answer was 40,000. Really.
FOI Friday: Dirty schools, lying parents, superbug deaths and attacks on postment
Children lose school places after parents lie < < < Birmingham Mail
RECORD numbers of Birmingham children are being left devastated by the city council withdrawing their prized place at school because the youngsters’ parents lied on their application form.
The local authority has taken places off eight pupils who were due to start their new schools this month after being tipped off by the mums and dads’ neighbours.
The number has shot up from five youngsters having their place withdrawn in 2010 and three in 2009.
Dirty School kitchens < < < Liverpool Echo
A FILTHY school canteen plagued by rodents posed an “imminent risk” to Merseyside pupils’ health, a report has revealed.
Mounds of mouse droppings were discovered in the kitchens of Bedford primary in Bootle in a surprise hygiene spot-check.
Pellets were even found in a bain-marie, a hot cupboard used to keep food warm for the 220 children who are served school meals, and near to where sandwiches were prepared.
40 deaths related to superbugs < < < Teesside Gazette
MORE than 40 people have died at two Teesside hospitals over the last three years after contracting a killer superbug.
A Freedom of Information request has shown the number of patients who died at the University Hospital of North Tees in Stockton, and the University Hospital of Hartlepool after contracting Clostridium Difficile (C.diff).
FOI FRIDAY: Drowned dogs, toxic waste, taser guns and cheer-me-up consultants
FOI stories this week have covered everything from the buildings council own to the hospital which admitted paying consultants to advise on how to cheer up patients. Here are 10 FOI stories which could work for you…
1. What buildings do councils own?
Here’s a clever FOI to kick things off this week. The communities secretary, Eric Pickles is keen for councils to reveal what properties they own. In Birmingham. the information is already available, thanks to an FOI. Asking the council how much it has spent on business rates in empty properties adds another dimension to the story.
2. Drowned puppies and toxic waste
Perhaps the most unusual story I’ve ever seen on a story based on an FOI request. The Hinckley Times used FOI to find out the items the borough council had been called out to clear up. Among things collected on 800 call outs to clean up dumped stuff was a bag of drowned puppies, toxic waste, dead horses and the complete contents of woman’s wardrobe, including her underwear.
3. Why councils are spying on you
FOI requests about use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 use by councils – the ability for them to spy on you if they think you’re doing something wrong – was all the rage last year. But this FOI request by the Sheffield Star proves it is worth doing again, because councils continue to use the powers. In Sheffield’s case, 30 times in the last year.
FOI Friday: Maternity complaints, metal thefts, paying to access phone records and money from recycling,
Complaints about maternity wards (Sunday Sun)
A BABY was cut across the face as it was delivered by a routine Caesarean section procedure at a North hospital, the Sunday Sun reported after using FOI to get hold of details of complaints made about maternity units in the region.
It was one of almost 200 formal complaints to NHS trusts about maternity units, services and care experienced by soon-to-be parents and new mums.
There are tens of thousands of births in the North each year, and so the number of complaints is low. But unions last night called on the Government to ensure there was enough cover on maternity wards.
The cost of checking mobile phone records (Stoke Sentinel)
With phone hacking rarely out of the news at the moment, here’s a different relationship involving mobile phones which may cause surprise: The amount police forces have to pay mobile phone companies for access to records when carrying out investigations.
Figures released under a Freedom of Information request show that the amounts paid to telephone companies so Staffordshire Police can get their hands on text messages and call records have spiralled since 2007.
The information shows the force spent £238,803 in the financial year 2007/8. The following year the bill went up by £50,000 to £288,928.
Then in 2009/10, the force paid out £330,869.
FOI Friday: Crumbling hospitals, pension funds, foreign patients and stolen monkeys
Crumbling hospitals (Press and Journal)
The Press and Journal in Aberdeen reports on how it has forced the local NHS authority to reveal the maintainance backlog at hospitals and health centres in its area. The backlog was first reported last month, but NHS Grampian refused to release the exact details. So the P&J turned to FOI to get it.
How council pension schemes invest their funds (The Observer)
The Guardian reports on a row brewing over the fact that public sector pension funds are investing millions of pounds in tobacco firms by buying shares in them. Doctors in the south west say the funds are effectively profiting from death. A little full on maybe, but the information emerged through FOI, and it may be worth asking other councils for details of the companies their pension schemes invest in.
Confidential council files lost on laptop (Huddersfield Daily Examiner)
The FOI about the number of data protection breaches at hospital trusts and police forces is well documented, but applying it to councils can generate some strong leads too. The Huddersfield Daily Examiner reports on how confidential files containing details of 25 people – including names, addresses and health needs – were on a stolen laptop. In another case, a person’s name, address, date of birth and phone number were faxed to the wrong number.
FOI FRIDAY: Benefit claims, burial problems, maternity complaints and noisy neighbourhoods
Benefits: A new area for FOI requests?
We start this week in Liverpool, where the ECHO has taken a closer look at the impact of the crackdown on people claiming incapacity benefits. Under FOI, it was able to establish that 1,000 people in Merseyside who had their benefits taken away from them on the grounds they were fit too work had the decision overturned on appeal – suggesting 1,000 people too ill to work did lose benefits for a while. The appeal success rate is one in three, according to the information from the Department for Work and Pensions
Here’s one I suspect will run and run, in both Suffolk and elsewhere in the country: Gagging orders at councils as staff leave. Suffolk County Council – them again 0 has issued 13 in 12 weeks, spending £400,000 on the compromise agreements in the process. I suspect Suffolk won’t be alone. The East Anglian Daily Times pulled up this story using FOI
An interesting bit of data FOI unearthed in the Lancashire Telegraph, which reports that an FOI request into how burial plots were available at graveyards in Burnley (2,000) would only be enough to last the area for 10 years, with 200 people opting to be buried every year.
Maybe it’s because I’m hopefully about to become a Dad, but asking for the number of complaints made to maternity departments seems quite a good way to enable would-be parents to assess how good a maternity unit is. The Evening Standard quotes data in relation to an article about a woman who died at a hospital where a lot of complaints had been made.
If MPs can’t travel First Class at the public’s expense, why should councillors? It’s a question Lancashire County Council struggled to answer when the Lancashire Evening Post used FOI to find out how much had been spent on first class rail tickets in recent years: £205,000 on 1,245 journeys. Tory leader Geoff Driver says it’s worth the extra expense because it means councillors can travel in a manner of “confidentiality, comfort and convenience”. An old FOI, but worth revisiting.
Overseas travel at the council
The Sunday Sun goes a little more global in its quest for information on travel costs at councils – working out that councils in the North spend £300,000 on overseas travel. The key to the success here was not only asking for cost of travel, but details of travel, as demonstrated by the intro:
HOW much does it cost to change a lightbulb? Well, it seems more than £1,000 for one North council.
That’s the amount dim bosses at the cash-strapped local authority forked out for an art expert to jet into the region twice – to help put up then take down a string of lights at a modern art show.
Councils often collect data and break it down to ward level – after all, someone has to take the random groupings of populations seriously. The Birmingham Mail used FOI to ask about noisy neighbour complaints, and received a ward-by-ward breakdown.
Sometimes, it’s easier to let an FOI story speak for itself, and that is the case with this clever one from the Yorkshire Post:
Cash-squeezed Yorkshire councils are paying their staff thousands of pounds in excessive car mileage rates, a Yorkshire Post investigation has revealed.
At a time when authorities are cutting services and axing jobs, many were paying employees 65p a mile if they were a casual user or 50.5p a mile, together with a £1,239 lump sum, for essential users during the last financial year. The Government’s recommended mileage rate is 40p.
Getting consultation information
Government – local and national – is fond of a good consultation, especially if the people being consulted agree with them. Consultations can be a massively useful source of information for journalists too, as the Oxford Student newspaper has demonstrated. It reports on responses from Oxford dons about government plans to charge more for Visas – saying it would lead to reduced applications from abroad.
Drugs busts are in the paper all the time, but what do they add up to? The Sheffield Star used FOI to get the total figures for drugs seizures:
Figures obtained by The Star using the Freedom of Information Act show cannabis plants worth over £39m have been recovered, along with a stash of heroin worth £4.8m, cocaine worth £4.1m, crack cocaine worth £2.1m and a haul of amphetamine worth another £2.1m.
FOI Friday: NHS bonuses, crimes solved by PCSOs, hidden emails and a caution for serious crimes
1. Donald Trump v the vandalsIt’s golf dominating the news today so I’ll start with the Press and Journal in Aberdeen with a golf-related FOI. Donald Trump’s plans for a golf course there have upset many, and the P&J reports on the number of vandal attacks reported to police as a result of the project – presumably by protesters.
A fascinating FOI reported in the Portsmouth News involving a woman who asked for any emails written in relation to the death of her mother in hospital. Receiving one which included the reference ‘the fun starts here’ was a bit of a shock. Perhaps encouraging more readers to use FOI could pay dividends?
3. The impact of housing benefit
The Lancashire Evening Post revealed a fascinating set of data when using FOI to ask for housing benefits payments in the city. Payments have risen £5million in the last year – a sign of the recession maybe? – with one in 12 people in the city getting payments.
4. Raping a teenager aged 13? That’ll be a caution
This FOI won’t be new to some, but the Coventry Telegraph’s results from asking Warwickshire Police to reveal the number of people let off with a caution, and for what, are quite startling.
FOI Friday: 10 things we’ve learnt this week thanks to the Freedom of Information Act
Befordshire Police ‘rented out’ its officers to no fewer than 33 organisatons, reports Luton Today, thanks to and FOI request, including town centre committees, the local hospital and a parish council. The FOI went to the local police force.
You’d like to think if an organisation such as the Royal College of Paediatrics was asked to investigate problems at a hospital after the death of a child, it would be a given that said report must be made public. Apparently not, according to the BBC, which says such a report at a hospital in Birmingham was only made public after its FOI request. Worth noting if your hospital has suspicious deaths.
I did a similar FOI to this in 2008 – asking Merseyside health authorities how many times they turned down people for drugs which consultants said should be funded by the NHS. The fact that the problem is still so bad in some areas, as reported by the Oxford Mail, is quite shocking.
FOI Friday: 10 things we’ve learnt this week thanks to Freedom of Information
No breast implants left at lost property in this week’s FOI wrap, but we do have the credit card action of senior quango bosses, crime on buses, ineffective smoking ban clampdowns, schools dropping Christian assemblies … and Ministry of Defence staff leaking stuff on Twitter….
Asking for the statements of corporate credit cards belonging to executives at Yorkshire Forward proved a good call for a reporter, according to this story in the Wakefield Express.
The papers reports:
Sixty-two executives at the agency, funded by the government and European Union to attract investment to the region, spent more than £170,000 on their executive credit cards in an 18-month period. Credit card statements obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show hotel stays in Brussels, South Africa, America, China and Japan.
Restaurant bills of up to £500 were charged to the credit cards, held by Yorkshire Forward bosses including chairman Terry Hodgkinson and chief executive Tom Riordan.
The number of staff disciplined for ‘leaking’ things from the Ministry of Defence on Twitter and Facebook was revealed this week. There’s a bigger question here, perhaps, in looking at the impact social media has had on public bodies in terms of personnel issues – bullying, perhaps? Are people being ticked off for using it?
Christianity cancelled in school assemblies
I’m not sure if this story began life in the Birmingham Mail as an FOI but it’s one which could certainly be generated via FOI. The Birmingham Mail has established that 23 schools have received dispensation, in Birmingham, to stop holding Christian assemblies.
