I picked up a copy of Saturday’s Daily Mail and flicked through it while out earlier. One article caught my eye and I looked it up when I got home. Here it is “Rescuing a snail? That’s a job for the fire service… Brigade spent millions rescuing 17,000 animals“.
On first glance it looks like public money is being wasted on spurious Fire Brigade call outs. On deeper reading this statement is more disturbing “The Freedom of Information request, sent to 56 fire and rescue services, showed they had rescued 17,000 animals in the past three years. The cost was £3.5million“.
Some journalist looking for an easy story has sent loads of Freedom of Information requests out to Fire Brigade authorities around the country who have then been obliged to waste taxpayers money compiling these statistics.
I’m all for open government and a supporter of freedom of information but this takes the proverbial yellow liquid. Perhaps the Freedom of Information act needs to be amended so that those in the media looking for an easy story have to cover the costs they cause.
