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?

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.

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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.