I'm just not getting the hang of the Freedom of Information thing.

With Christmas and the new year coming and the prospect of a few difficult news-free days ahead, I thought I'd get ahead of the game.

So I asked our public bodies for some bits and bobs under the Freedom of Information Act.

Several weeks on and the answers are coming back and I'm not getting much information.

Harumph.

I asked the police to supply info they've published before - at least twice to my knowledge.

Namely, how many people in Leicestershire are currently involved in drug dealing and how many of these have what they call 'firearms markers' against their names on the police intelligence system?

They've told me in the past that this stuff is updated on the force intelligence system every four weeks.

I know "intelligence" is just that. It's not cast iron fact.

But it is indicative of where the city is going and, I think it might be of interest to the readers.

Very few people in Leicestershire can or want to lay their hands on a gun. Let's get that straight.

But let's also be very clear that we do have a number of armed criminals in this city and beyond.

Having said that, I was happy - yes really, I was happy - the other day to report that there was only one occasion last year where a shot was fired. But, I have also written about guns - the real thing, not replicas - being seized from crims - again, the real things, not replicas.

So, I am not chasing a 'Leicester's gun crime mayhem' story. I don't do that kind of thing, thank you very much.

This time they told me they weren't obliged to answer my question.

Their answer seemed to boil down to the idea that my story would be a tip-off to our armed criminals.

I wasn't asking for names and mobile numbers, just some stats.

A couple of days later the Foreign Office responded to another of my FOIA questions.

I admit, I ripped this one off from a former colleague.

A couple of years ago a Daily Mail trainee called Matt spent a few months with us.
He asked how many people from so-called rogue states had been barred from travelling to study at Leicestershire's three universities. National security and all that.

That Daily Mail lad got an answer. I got a knock-back.

If anything's going to feed a regional journalist's inferiority complex....

Another day, another refusal.

I asked the Ministry of Justice to list the contraband seized from inmates and visitors at Leicestershire's prisons. Drugs, phones and the like.

Big public interest argument in favour of us getting the goods, you might think.
"It would take too long", they said today.

Ho hum.

Maybe it's me. Do I draft my requests badly?

Or, should I be thinking the Freedom of Information Act isn't all it's cracked up to be?

There's a largely taxpayer-funded quango in the city which, days after its arrival, told us it was exempt from the FOIA. It's not their fault - and they do say they intend to "operate in a spirit of openness". But how many other public bodies are exempt?

The legislation allows me to appeal first to the bodies which turned me down and then to the independent information commissioner if I'm still unhappy.

Anyone with expertise in this area care to offer their thoughts?

UPDATE: just to be clear, what I was moaning about was the fact that the quango was exempt and when I said it declared itself exempt, what I meant was that it made a point of highlighting this fact almost as soon as it came into being.

This particular quango is jointly owned by two local authorities and that’s what makes it exempt – if it was owned by just one, it would be covered by the Act.

It still spends our money. How sensible is that?

David Taylor MP

There was a real sadness in the newsroom today as we worked on the breaking story of David Taylor's sudden death.
Some of us here go back quite a few years with David, MP for North West Leicestershire since 1997.

He had a heart attack on Boxing Day while he was visiting Calke Abbey.

The news - and we had to deliver it over the phone to some of his friends and associates - has hit people very hard.

I was a cub reporter when I first met him, back in 1994 when I joined the Coalville Times.

David was a parish and borough councillor then. I'm pretty sure he was working full time too.

That's a lot of politics to squeeze in.

Well, as Oscar Wilde said: "Socialism would be great if it didn't take up so many evenings." I'm paraphrasing.

And, it might not have been Wilde.

But, it's a good line.

When I arrived in Coalville there was much talk among the senior members of the Labour Party about 'Young David'.

I'm not sure how many attempts it took, but he won the seat from the Tories in the landslide of 1997.

I went down to the count at Whitwick leisure centre with the-then editor of the Times, (of Coalville, not London).

A few of us got a little drunk - we weren't covering, we were there for the fun of it all - and I remember being 'shushed' by someone from the Mercury because we were getting a little over-excited as we watched the political map changing locally and nationally.

For the next few years David was a good friend of the paper and was in it all the while doing his job - fighting for a constituent or opening a community centre here or there. You get the idea, MP stuff.

I don't know much about Parliamentary politics. Come to think of it, I don't know too much about the town hall stuff either.

But I could tell David was one of the good ones. I've met some of the bad ones in my time and it's not always down to duck islands and home flipping.

He will be much missed.

Mercury the Messenger, chapter II

Back to police stuff.
Every time I file a story I am acutely conscious - let me repeat that - I am acutely conscious there is a consequence.

If we report a bad run of muggings in your neighbourhood do you begin to wonder if it’s safe to go out any more? You may do.

There's been a couple of nasty ones where I live and it gave me pause for thought when I wrote the story and reflected that it was about a spot about 200 yards from my house.

But, of course it's safe to go out.

Ask someone how many cars got turned over in New Parks or Stoneygate this week. “Don’t know”, they’ll say. “Sixty?”

The answer might actually - in a good week admittedly - be none.

Have newspapers inflated the fear of crime? I don't know.

Bad reporting by definition distorts the way people see the world.

To me it's a case of 'good or bad, it's all news'.

An officer called me today and said he'd arranged for me to talk to an 89-year-old woman whose shopping bag had been stolen by some sneak.

Christmas presents, pension, personal stuff. All gone.

When I get the story together I will include some background.

Purse 'dipping' is big at this time of year - the shops are crowded and purses are bulging with savings drawn out for the big shopping trip.

While telling this lady's her story I will say that the picture is relatively good so far this year.

In Leicester city centre, the number of thefts has been low this past couple of weeks compared to previous years, some thieves have been locked up and the police (with the help of us as well as the telly and radio people) have done a great job
letting elderly women know that they have to be careful when they pop into town.

I know we’re in a position to influence the way people feel about all kinds of crime and, as a consequence, how at ease they are as they go about their business.

Going back to that earlier stuff about the council, for me it’s not whether I talk the city up, down or sideways.

It’s about telling people’s stories and keeping a sense of perspective. Let me know if you think I get it wrong.

Mercury, he was that messenger fella wasn't he?

I had words with some people from the city council today. They keep accusing the Mercury of "talking the city down".

The politicians have been saying it for some time and now, most recently in a letter we published last week, the civil servants are saying it too.

One of them rang up to ask me why I'd left a fairly facetious comment in response to the letter on our website. I decided to defend our honour.

Why, I'm asking, is this same phrase cropping up time and time again.

It smacks of a PR strategy. I might be wrong though because this really isn't my field.

But, my reading of it is that some of these council people really do see our scrutiny of their affairs - sometime critical, sometimes supportive - as an attack on the city itself.

No, it's nothing of the sort.

If we have a pop at a council policy we're aiming at an administration, not a city.

There is a big difference.

Browsing Twitter earlier today, we found this post from the "Labour voice of New Parks", Councillor Colin Hall - otherwise known as Ultra_Fox. We know from past experience he's not our biggest fan.

He has referred to us as the Daily Heil. A good socialist lad should know better than to mess around with Nazi imagery. It's poor taste, isn't it?

He was reflecting on the failure of the city's bid to be part of the World Cup party. He's not happy with the football authorities and, it seems, us.

Councillor Hall - the city's high bailiff no less - wrote the following: "Recriminations over this defeat will continue. In particular, the treachery of the Mercury in past 6 months won't be forgotten or forgiven."

We've backed the bid from the very beginning.

Treachery?

Isn't this all getting a little overheated?

Thankfully, my job doesn't take me too far in to the political world.

I covered the city council beat for a wee while some time ago while we waited for a new correspondent to arrive.

I hated every minute of it.

A few days in, I wrote a story about some part of town getting new road safety measures.

I spoke to one of the local councillors. "Great news for my ward, I'm delighted.....", he told me.

A day later someone from another party said to me: "I saw your article. Did you know he voted against those road safety measures at every opportunity?" Grrr.

Someone read the blog, I said, someone read the blog.

Kingswood have removed the 'to let' sign one of their contractors attached to the front of my house.(See below).They came within a couple of hours of my complaint and took the sign away - but left some bits of wood and a couple of nails.
Oh well, it's a victory of sorts because the few lines I wrote about this the other day attracted a reader's comment. And not someone who sits within 15 yards of my desk.
Is this the start of an online publishing sensation?
My contributor is called Ned and I followed the link to his blog and, although I haven't read it in too much detail just yet, I noticed he has posted a series of photographs of Leicester's best buildings.
There are some ace places in this city and I think it's easy to forget that sometimes - especially when I'm walking past the spot where the Pump and Tap and the Bowstring Bridge used to be.

My name is Ciaran and I like meeting people in uniforms.

I broke into new territory this week - Keyham Lane police station.
For vague historical reasons - I've no idea what they are - we've never really had so much to do with this place, even back in the days before I got here.
It's in Hamilton, Leicester and it covers a huge part of the city, neighbourhoods like Belgrave, Thurnby Lodge and Netherhall. Big, important and, above all, newsy places.
I arrived at the station the other night and, straight away, one or two officers pointed out that other stations get all the publicity.
Well, the job now is to win the trust of these officers and see if we can get them in the paper as often as some of their colleagues.
I look forward to doing that - the softy stuff and the less easy side of life there.
It started really well.
I spent a few hours walking around Belgrave and St Marks with Pc Laura Nutt.
This will be part of a series of features I'm putting together toward the end of the month.
I've got half a notebook of shorthand notes and I'll get around to reading and translating them over the next few days.
Pc Nutt was great though. A real beat officer.
She knows what makes this area tick, what gets under people's skin.
She also dealt with one of the resident ne'er do wells brilliantly. I watched her search the lad in the street, while chatting to him like a concerned mum.

Why do the small things bother me so much?

Slightly off topic this one.
Imagine my surprise when I got an angry call from home earlier today to inform me that my little castle is apparently on the market.
It's mine, all mine - and I've got the mortgage statements to prove it.
Kingswood estate agents apparently have other ideas.
A contractor working for them stuck a 'to let' sign in my front yard earlier today. Grrr.
I made a couple of calls to their office - which is a couple of hundred yards away from home - and asked them to take it down.
Six hours or so later it was still there.
I'm leaving the office shortly and I'm hoping it's gone by the time I get back.
Again, I say 'grrr'.

I used to like the Guardian, now I despise it.

My colleague, education correspondent Ian Wishart, sent me a link to this Guardian thought piece. What a demoralising start to the day.I have only the vaguest of ideas who George Monbiot is because I stopped reading the Guardian years ago.
I stopped when I realised I'd started to hate its snobby elitism. It's just so back-breakingly right-on about everything.
Now, I'm a progressive sort myself, but it said absolutely nothing to me.
From its news to its fashion spreads, its music coverage and even its football writing, everything annoyed me.
Plus - and this is the big one - so many its readers I've met are nothing short of know-it-all bigots.
The disrespect Monbiot shows to local newspapers and journalists in this piece - not to mention his shallow research - is breathtaking.
Why doesn't he tackle the question of standards at the paper he's associated with and the other nationals?
Collectively, they cosy up to the most powerful political and commercial interests in the land and never let on that they're doing it.
I've written this in work time.
So, I'd better get on.
Bosses from a large supermarket chain, the chief constable and the council leader are popping over to deliver the plan for next week's Mercury.

I love writing fluffy stories. There, I've said it!

So, I've been moaning about how I've spent the past couple of weeks looking for conventional hard news stories. And failing miserably.
The week ended with me marking the retirement of a police sniffer dog called Bill.
I enjoyed meeting Bill and his handler and companion for the past seven years,Pc Terry Durham.
Bill bowed out on Friday having helped police trace all kinds of drugs and guns. He's going to live with a real friend of the paper, Leicestershire's beat bobby of the year, Pc Harvey Watson.
The happy pic on the left of Harvey and Bill was taken by one of our snappers.
The story was fun to write and it went down well with the bosses, it's today's page five fluffy story.
Knowing how stats-obsessed the modern public sector has become, I asked the police semi-seriously if they could provide Bill's detection rates.
They couldn't, but I wouldn't have been too surprised if they'd said: "No, but we can say he has consistently scored 90-plus per cent in public satisfaction surveys."
I love the mad directions this job sends me in.
The stories we cover are often distressing and it's easy to go home feeling a little blue about the world.
Hopefully next week will bring something a little harder my way, but I hope the fluffy stuff keeps coming.

Join the Q.

The police officers I've been speaking to this week have all agreed: things are quiet pretty much everywhere across the city.

Only they don't use what they call the Q-word.

I guess they think they'll jinx themselves if they do. I tend to ask them if it's been 'eventful' or not on their patches.

Well, it's been a quiet time for me too.

As someone who lives in the city - and will have done for 10 years come the end of the month - I'm more than happy. In fact it's great.

However, as a reporter I have to say it's not a good situation.

I'm wondering what my newsdesk colleagues are thinking. Are they running out of patience with me?

If they are, they're hiding it well.

So, as a citizen I should be glad that the stories I've been looking at have been about relatively minor - but never trivial - matters.

This past couple of days it's been bike thefts, purse 'dipping' gangs, a small cannabis 'factory' and, today, a lady who has cooked curry for 200 police officers to raise a couple of hundred pounds for the Poppy Appeal and Help for Heroes.

Reporters like big crash, bang, wallop stories.

There's no escaping that, but I will never lose sight of the fact that losing out to a petty thief is a nasty experience.

The elderly ladies I've talked to down the years after their purses have been lifted from their shopping bags have been among the most troubling interviews I've ever done.

One, she was in her late-70s, once told me: "I didn’t come into the city centre for some time afterwards because I didn’t like the idea of being in a crowd.

"I was convinced it would happen again. It wasn’t about the money they took from me – that was only a couple of pounds.

"What they did was make me feel unsafe in the city I was born in."

Most newsrooms have long since banned phrases such as 'callous burglars' or 'cold-hearted thieves'.

I agree, they are rotten cliches and I've not been caught trying to smuggle them into my stories for a long time, but sometimes they just fit.

Maybe things will start to speed up next week.

And maybe Liverpool FC will start to speed up too.

And maybe, just maybe something will come out of the blue to save the Pump and Tap and the Bowstring Bridge.

What's the opposite of the Midas touch?

The police invited me along to an early morning drugs raid the other day.

They were calling on a man they think is selling heroin from a relative's home.

I did warn them.

Whenever they ask me to come along on these things the people they are looking for are invariably elsewhere.

So, the front door went through after a couple of mighty blows with the battering ram and officers piled in.

Andy the snapper, a lad from another paper and I waited patiently outside for the nod to come out of the shadows.

Then we heard the voice from inside: "He's not here duck."

I'd jinxed the police again.

For the record, the cutie sniffer dog picked up traces of class A - heroin and the like - throughout the place and the team behind this raid are still on the suspect's trail.

I'll stay at home the next time they go for him.

They were doing what? Firing a paintball gun at prostitutes?

Picked up an odd story the other day. It was in the Mercury midweek.

It's one I'll never have to write again if I stay at this desk until I'm carted off to a home for retired hacks.

I heard that a group of young men was cruising the city in a posh car firing paintball gun pellets at working girls in the city's vice areas.

I can't tune into the way those men must look at the world or what motivated this spiteful stunt.

I have a feeling their thought process ran something like this: "Let's humiliate those women. We'll give them a paint stain and a nice little bruise to remember us by."

It was a twist on a story I've looked at many times down the years - violence against the women who we all see when we nip up London Road for a curry or drive along Humberstone Road.

So, attacks on the women is not a new story.

Their 'boyfriends' (pimps actually, but I always feel too self-conscious to use that word - this is Leicester, not New York) are more often than not a vicious, money-grabbing bunch.

Then there are apparently quite a few punters who pay up, do the deed and then mug the girl to get their money back.

The paintball gun story came to me late in the day, so the people who would normally put me in touch with the women had gone home for the day.

A word here about those people. It's a welfare group called New Futures and they are top.

So, I headed out alone to the two areas where I expected to run into the women.

I was nervous. I've heard all kinds of stories about the 'boyfriends' and assorted oddballs who hang around the backstreets.

In the event, I spoke to six busy women and managed to avoid the erm, pimps.

Some had heard about the paintball gang, some wondered what I was on about and asked me if I'd be hanging around long because I was "putting the punters off".

But they all had plenty to say when I asked them to speak more generally about the grief they almost expect every time they come out.

All had been assaulted in some way in the past couple of weeks.

One girl I didn't meet that night is as far as I know still waiting for news on whether she's lost her hearing in one ear permanently.

A man came up from behind her and hit across the side of her head with a brick.

One of the women said someone had pinged a small metal projectile at her with a catapult.

And so it goes on.

Happily - and I know that sounds odd - there is something positive to conclude with here.

Now I'm guessing New Futures and sound and sympathetic policing has had an influence here, but the women speak to the police and when they are victims of crime they have come to expect justice.

That wasn't always the case and it certainly isn't universal even now.

But instead of soaking up the punishment they are beginning to feel that they can expect to be listened to and, if they are willing to stay with it and make a statement, action can be taken against abusive, dangerous men.

One punter was jailed for raping several women earlier this year really only because the women stayed with it, made their statements, put up with the vagaries of the criminal justice system and had their day in court.

That man won't be around to harm women for years.

I think the conclusion is that a largely ignored, hidden, even sometimes reviled group of women, is slowly claiming one of the most basic rights.

Incidentally, a day or two later I heard one of the women had passed on the registration number of the posh car the paintball boys were travelling in.

The driver was a well-paid young professional. He's been visited at home and, although he won't be seeing the inside of a courtroom, he's had the fright of his life by all accounts.

Incidentally, I must admit to a little hesitation when I realised I'd inadvertently indulged in a spot of cliched alliteration when I filed the story.

I put the words 'prostitutes', 'pot-shots' and 'paintball gun' - in the first paragraph.

I left it the way it was because I couldn't think of any other way of putting it.

In an earlier post I said something dismissive about cliches in news copy and probably implied that I could never do such a thing.

Clearly I can.

The most demoralising story of the year?

Until yesterday, I hadn't had been involved in our coverage of the most demoralising and difficult story of the year - the Fiona Pilkington case.

Fiona killed herself and her daughter, Francecca, two years ago. She was driven to despair because her family had been singled out for vile abuse by a group of kids who lived on her street.

Some of the abuse must have sounded pretty trivial to police call handlers - otherwise known as the people who pick up the phone when you call.

Fiona complained about kids throwing snowballs, kicking footballs around the place and generally being nuisances.

Ah, but then there were far more sinister things happening too.

Fiona's children, Francecca and Anthony both had learning disabilities. So they were obviously fair game to a gang of vicious young bigots.

Both were at times pushed around, pelted with stones and subjected to taunts and name calling.

Fiona had been complaining about it for years, but it seems the police and assorted council sorts - weren't really listening to her.

If they were, they certainly didn't put the pieces together and work out that there was a pattern, a very nasty pattern, in Bardon Road, Barwell.

And we all know what she did to find peace.

I'd read our coverage of the inquest, which took place over several days last month, and wondered how things could go so wrong.

After all, this is Leicestershire - the home of common sense and, dare I say it, old fashioned neighbourhood policing.

It all seemed so at odds with what I see and hear day to day.

Over the past few weeks I've racked up more than 20 hours out and about with beat officers in Braunstone, Eyres Monsell, Saffron Lane and Mowmacre, Stocking Farm and Abbey Rise.

I was spending time with them for a series of features which is slowly taking shape.

I'm worrying now that it is going to end up looking like us doing a 'bobbies on the beat' PR favour for the police in the aftermath of the Barwell stories.

It was our idea and it's been planned for ages. It has nothing to do with what happened to Fiona and her family.

It struck me that those officers are involved in every area of life in these places, whether it's putting a door through on a drugs house, visiting the vulnerable at home, calling in on shopkeepers or pushing the authorities to clean up a play area.

Yesterday, the great and the good came together at police HQ in Enderby to plot their way through the mess.

Senior officers reassured the members of the police authority that things had and were changing.

Chief constable Chris Eyre's repeated apology to Fiona's family was genuine and heartfelt.

I kind of know Mr Eyre. I don't get too many opportunities to speak to the men and women who work at that level, but whenever I've spoken to him - about everything from people trafficking and enforced prostitution to stripping proper, top-level criminals of their beloved 'bling' - he's struck me as a good sort. Officers at all levels seem to like him too.

Was Barwell a one-off? We'll have to wait and see.

******************************************

Home Secretary Alan Johnson did something I'm happy to call stupid this week - he read a quote in a couple of national newspapers and took it as an absolute truth.

They weren't the kind of publications I'd expect a good progressive lad like him to be reading.

He picked up on a comment made during the inquest into Fiona and Francecca's deaths.

It was made by a senior Leicestershire officer and went something like "Dealing with anti-social behaviour isn't a job for the police alone."

This was reported as "Police abandon the streets to feral youths."

Can you spot the difference?

Chief constable Chris Eyre said the two nationals had "dramatically misreported" his colleague's comments.

Oh well, what do those journalists care? They won't be back in Leicestershire any time soon.

It's a funny thing how some of our nationals, especially the ones I'd call pro-establishment, seem to enjoy taking a pop at the police.

Whenever the police are in the firing line, one old hand who works at a city station always points out the cliches which come thick and fast in the reporting.

If the papers don't agree with an arrest - say, it's one of the paper's political or commercial chums - the following tend to appear:

They are inevitably "bundled into the back of a police van" before being held in a "cold and damp police cell".

If they see the inside of a prison (and we know how rare that is for the friends of these national newspapers) they are invariably thrown in among "murderers and rapists".

Funny that.

Say what you like about the way I write my stories - and people do, just look at our website - but I've never stooped that low. Cliches? Eugh.

Welcome to the Leicester Mercury police blog.

So, even I'm doing it now - blogging.

Writing for newspapers comes naturally, but doing so in the first person for a blog is hard and against my grain.

After all, there's no 'I' in journalism.

Oh, there is. Sorry.

I'm just short of a decade into my time at the Leicester Mercury and I've been covering the police beat for the past eight years or so.

I have a rather pompous job title - social affairs correspondent. Put simply, I talk to the police a lot.

For the record, I love what I do. Most days.

It hasn't been a particularly busy week for me. Great time to start a blog.

I am still sore that my favourite haunt - Cafe Roma in Halford Street - was burgled four times in the space of a week.

It was a strange experience writing a crime story about a place I know so well.

If anyone is reading this and fancies a good Italian meal, can I suggest they call in and help them replace the money that was stolen.

Fortunately my colleagues have been hard at work.

The imminent demolition of the Bowstring Bridge - and the uncertain future of the Pump and Tap pub - continues to divide readers.

I have to say I'm a Pump and Tap boy so I'm feeling sore about this too.

The protesters have been there every day this week. Doing what?
Well, it seems they're there to share their resentment at the loss of a rather beautiful old thing.

They've had a lot of coverage in the Mercury, so I was feeling sore - I know, it's been that kind of week - when one of them was verbally abusive to one of our reporters who'd gone down to chat to them.

On the way to the Pump that night I made my feelings known to them - forcefully, I hope.