Conditional Offer (pt.3)

Conditional Offer (Pt.3)

Update: Fife Council in crumpled heap alongside DGC after failure over council tax query

It seems to be taking the various corporate council entities an inordinate amount of time to respond to our colleague, Mr James, in his quest to find the lawful obligation to government legislation – including council tax – but, to give them their due, Fife Council have finally responded in an acceptable manner after a review of their FOI response (below).

In an email sent on behalf of Head of Legal & Democratic Services, Lindsay Thomson (pictured right), Fife Council have now joined Dumfries & Galloway Council, the Scottish Government and the UK Ministry of Justice in confirming that they, too, have no evidence of the lawful basis upon which they and others impose government legislation upon the masses:

Dear Mr James

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION (SCOTLAND) ACT 2002 (“the Act”)

REQUEST FOR REVIEW – FCIR: 44551 R026.23

I refer to your email dated and received on 27/03/2023 which has been taken as a request to review your information request.  This has been passed to me for attention […]

In your email dated 27/03/2023, you wrote to the council to raise your dissatisfaction with the initial response with the following information:

Thank you for your response; however, it appears that you have misunderstood the question and I therefore require a review.

I asked for the lawfully-established, legally-binding obligation to comply with government legislation. You cannot respond by basically saying, “you are bound by government legislation because it says so in government legislation”. That is called circular reasoning and in no way answers my request.

I have looked into this matter and find that Fife Council does not hold the information you have requested. In compliance with the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, we are required to provide notice that the information is not held under S17 – No information held.

This begs the question: on what basis are people subjected to any government legislation if there is no evidence of any lawful obligation? 

Mr James has informed DoD that he intends to find out – with a final ‘do or die’ request for information to someone whom, if such an obligation really does exist, really ought to know.

Stay tuned.

DoD