Leicester Mercury political correspondent
David MacLean
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Posts by David MacLean
Mayor pay panel member leaves the country
Nov 18th
Is there any room on the flight for the other three, Dominic?
(It’s worth pointing out that he’s off on a long-planned break – rather than fleeing the country!)
The Fall Guy?
Nov 16th
Councils across the country have these “independent pay panels” which only ever seem to send politicians’ pay one way – and that’s up.
It’s never been a problem before, of course. Yes, a grumpy story might pop-up in the Mercury when a councillor pay rise is first announced, people will be temporarily disgruntled, but then it blows over in time for full council where elected members happily accept the proposals for a pay hike.
Start mucking around on these panels by suggesting pay freezes or cuts and you’d quickly find yourself sidelined.
The shock move to almost double the mayor’s salary to £100,000, and his deputy’s pay to £75,000, has a completely different feel to rises which have gone before. Some backbench councillors are outraged and have threatened to quit the party, while city centre vox pop participants are unanimous in their opposition, a sign no doubt of the strong public opinion in general.
Peter Soulsby won’t be drawn one way or the other on the £100k proposal, but has swiftly kicked the can down the street and well into the new year.
Martin Traynor, chair of Leicester’s pay panel, is bravely standing by his recommendations just as every politician in town frantically distances themselves from them. He was due to appear on BBC Radio Leicester this morning to justify his findings.
It’s hard not to get the feeling that Martin’s going to become the fall guy for all of this.
Soulsby Salary Set To Soar
Nov 15th
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City mayor, his team, and councillors in line for big pay hike
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“There’ll be uproar,” says one politico
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See Wednesday’s Mercury for full story
In A Spin: Misled by county council over Westco FOI
Nov 13th
I was misled by Leicestershire County Council when it effectively told me that no records existed anywhere on county council hard drives of an FOI request I lodged just a few weeks ago, I can now confirm.
I suspected that their initial response wasn’t accurate and appealed the decision.
In the meantime a source at the council confirmed that I was on the right track, and that the county may have misled me in its original response.
After hinting at this development on Twitter, I’ve now had a response from the county council. It has admitted that it did hold the information I’d ask for, and has now handed it over.
The council’s explanation for the original response is that my original request had been “misinterpretated” and on reviewing the decision “it was acknowledged immediately that a mistake had incurred”.
Perhaps the most interesting thing to jump out is Paul Masterman’s involvement in the original request.
Different council’s deal with FOI requests in different ways. But at the county council, whenever I’ve called them about responses to FOI request that I’ve seen on the public disclosure log, they’ve never been aware of individual FOIs prior to my phonecall.
It suggests that the press office usually takes a hands-off approach to FOI requests, which in my view is good practice.
So it came as a surprise to see Westco man Masterman getting involved in my request before a response had been signed off and sent to me.
The emails are just one line of inquiry. I’ve now been contacted by a handful of people who were involved in campaigns for the other LGA chairmanship hopefuls – who have all provided me with further information.
There’s still a lot to work on, and it’s heartening to see new Westco-related requests appearing on the council’s FOI disclosure log from those who are interested in this issue.
Who says just anyone can get into university these days?
Nov 2nd
This FOI request has been received by Leicestershire County Council by a university student:
i am the student of msc information mamanement in robert gordon univeristy aberdeen.i have an assignment on the topice of finding a job as information manager through inetrnet or news papers.i found a job in this website as information manager and now i need some information about this council .so please if you help me to find some information about this council and its way of work taht should be so much help to comleteing my assignment.i am not applying for this job but just imagining for my assignment that i am applying .so what i need to apply for this job and what kind of proposal and stragties i need to make for them.i am very thank full if you give me the name of some journals or book that written on this.please reply me as soon as possible
Inside the topsy turvy world of Colin Hall
Oct 19th
Former Lord Mayor Colin Hall bills his website – launched in June – as ‘the blog Leicester’s been waiting for’.
But now it’s arrived, it turns out the waiting has been in vain – there have only been five posts since the summer.
His latest article is about the departure of Mercury editor Keith Perch, in which he levels various accusations about news priorities at the paper.
In the topsy turvy world of Colin Hall the potential closure of the children’s heart unit at Glenfield – the subject of a four-month Mercury campaign and a 3,000 name petition – was ‘marginalised and overlooked’ by us.
Meanwhile an incident where his trousers fell down in public – which made just 200 words at the bottom of page two when it happened, plus passing references during his bizarre year as mayor – was the subject of ‘unremitting focus’.
The rest of his article sees him complain about our declining circulation, the community no longer seeing the Mercury as an essential read, our misuse of influence, the public’s distaste for our political coverage and an obsession with pet causes.
All allegations which would have had slightly more impact if he hadn’t happily used the pages of the Mercury to settle a few old scores just five months ago. Very principled, Colin.
“I know nothing”
Oct 17th
No records exist anywhere on county council hard drives, or council premises, of an FOI request I lodged just a few weeks ago.
This means that the request was either dealt with entirely verbally – rare for an FOI request in my experience – or that all emails have already been deleted, hard drives thoroughly wiped, and documents shredded. Now, I want to know why.
My request regarded PR at the county council. To quickly recap Westco, the commercial arm of a London council, got paid to find a new PR boss for Leicestershire County Council. The ad attracted 40 applicants, no-one ever got interviewed, and the firm got another six month £60,000 stint at the authority.
The first interim PR guru supplied to the council by Westco, Fergus Sheppard, was replaced for the second six month stint by Paul Masterman, but still worked for the county council, one day each week, until fairly recently. He was not based at County Hall, and was instead down in London. Private Eye later alleged that he was effectively council leader David Parsons’ personal PR man, but the council denied it.
Now, this summer I attempted to use Freedom of Information laws to examine emails between Fergus and David to establish the exact nature of Fergus’ role.
But effectively I was told there wasn’t any communication between the council leader and one of the authority’s most senior PR chiefs, or that there were no records at all and all emails had been deleted from council servers.
I was surprised at this, so I lodged a new Freedom of 
Information request last month, asking for all correspondence relating to the original request. I hoped that it would shed more light on how my original request was dealt with internally.
The response has now arrived. The council says it doesn’t hold the information. Again.
I’ve now asked for an internal review, to establish who was contacted as part of this request, what their responses were, and how any paperwork or email records may have been disposed of.
If I don’t get any satisfaction the next step will be to report the matter to the information commissioner. Due to a backlog, an investigation by the commissioner is likely to report back just before the county council elections in May 2013.
I’m not stopping until I’ve got to the bottom of this one, David.
A few words on Keith Perch’s departure
Oct 16th
I became a political journalist to cut through spin and to report the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it was for those in authority. One of the most frustrating things as a journalist is not having any freedom in your role.
Many journalist friends across the country tell me they don’t have that freedom. Editors tell them which public figures to target, which political parties to go easy on, and which issues are no-go areas. Those same editors, who started off as young and enthusiastic seekers of truth, often simply become another member of the local establishment.
Before arriving at the Mercury I turned down a job offer at another newspaper because I wasn’t convinced that I’d have the freedom to report on politics in the area.
But when I moved to the Mercury it was clear that Keith was very keen for reporters to do some traditional digging and contact-building and come up with stories that press officers would have kept hidden.
When I started there were two political reporters, and Keith wanted to make sure we both knew the Freedom of Information Act inside out to help expose the workings of local authorities, and courses in London were offered to us. Two years down the line and I’ve pulled in some cracking tales from FOI.
As a former political journalist himself Keith’s door was always open for advice on how to cover the complexities of local government. And while he wasn’t one of those editors who turns up to the opening of a civic envelope, he was plugged in to Leicester life and politics and I’d often leave his office with a tip off about a developing political issue.
Back in 2009 when many regional editors didn’t want their journalists blogging and Tweeting, Keith encouraged it. It wasn’t unchecked, of course, but there was just one very simple proviso: If you wouldn’t say it in a column, don’t say it on the web. It’s now a major part of my job.
After previous experiences elsewhere it was a joy to be able to report on politics knowing that politicians couldn’t get stories spiked simply by going above your head to the boss. Stories would be held by him if he spotted any holes in them, but none were ever spiked because of their potential to upset a politician or party.
Several local politicos, from across the political spectrum, sent messages to me this week saying that he brought bite back to political reporting at the Mercury. Long may it continue.
