The FREEDOM of Information Act requires that, upon written application to the relevant public body, all and any information requested by a member of the public must be provided within a certain time period (usually 20 days but this can be extended under certain circumstances and/or with the agreement of the requester of the information).

Now, there are already some serious problems with the act itself:

1. The public body has the right to refuse access to the information if they believe that the public interest in disclosing the relevant information outweighs the public interest in maintaining the exemption.

2. Your own personal information held by these public bodies is also exempt and treated under the Data Protection Act and requires a payment to be made for you to obtain the information.

3. No reason is required to be given to an applicant whose request is denied.

To give you another example of just how ridiculous this whole mess is, Lord Falconer, the idiot who has just announced that the government intends to limit the number of applications that will be allowed by factoring various extra costs before rejecting them for being likely to exceed the £600 cost limit, seemed to be perfectly happy at the "revelations" that some public bodies were even shredding or deleting documents at double the normal rate prior to the act coming into force and again prior to the addition of the "General Right of Access" section of the act on January 1st 2005.

It is almost as if they have something to hide, isn't it?!

Let's consider the broader picture here:

We pay for this information to be collected in the first place but then have to submit a request to read it!

We can be refused the information if it is deemed not to be cost-effective or if the "public's best interests" are better served by the information being kept secret. (but I AM the public? Do I not get a say in this?!)

We are about to have our ability to successfully apply for information severely hampered by the inclusion of extra expenses not previously accounted for in the total cost of complying with the request.

Our information, our public bodies, our money spent collecting it and our money paying civil servants to refuse us access to it.

It is almost as if they have something to hide, isn't it?!

For the record, try placing a freedom of information request to the Metropolitan Police for any CCTV images or footage from the 7-7 bombings investigation.

Clearly, as the 7-7 "commentary" has stated, there is masses of evidence proving beyond doubt that the four men who have been posthumously charged and convicted of the crime by the media, the government and the police, were as guilty as could be. Although, as yet, we have been privy to precisely none of that evidence and have, instead, received one of the worst and most incomplete reports ever put together, full of holes, lies, misdirection and dishonesty. Of course, any accusations regarding the "odd" and "unusual" behaviour of the emergency services that day has simply been put down to "operational errors" and, needless to say, no possible nefarious reasons for some of the incredible, unfathomable decisions made that day have ever been investigated.

So when you issue this request you should expect to see hundreds of images and hours of footage coming back from the hundreds if not thousands of CCTV cameras that they would have passed by along their journey. Obviously, there will be none of the No.30 bus as, strangely, after having just been serviced by a member of the contractors technical staff that nobody at the bus depot had ever seen before or since, the cameras on that bus were not working that day.

But that should not stop you from receiving pictures from the 13 separate cameras between the clearly doctored doorway photo at Luton station to the platform itself and there will surely be many pictures of them boarding the train to London (that did not actually run that day!) that they are alleged to have taken prior to carrying out their heinous attack.

So, what could the cost to the Met be of providing just one photo of them boarding the train at Luton? One assumes that it will be less than £600 as the investigation is not actually closed as yet. This indicates that the file of these pictures is probably on or close to an investigator's desk thus requiring that they simply open the file, take out the picture, scan or print it and e-mail or post it.

About an hours work, maximum?! One assumes or even hopes that investigators are not earning £598 per hour (the other £2 will be required to cover the massive costs of the scanning or the printing, envelope and stamp) and therefore cost cannot possibly be an issue here.

Maybe the images are a threat to national security?

Well, unlikely, as these men are dead and we have been told that they were absolutely, 100%, definitely responsible for the alleged suicide bombings. What is to hide? We have seen one photo of them (although they were not all in the original picture to begin with!) so we know what they look like, what they are accused and "convicted" of doing, where they were at any given point that morning, when they did it, how they did it and who else they killed...

What possible information could the Met have in those images that could be perceived to be a threat to national security were it to be allowed for public viewing?!

So, as far as we can see, there should be no good reason at all for denying a FoI request for just one image or piece of film of the four men boarding the train at Luton that the 7-7 "commentary" claims that they took into King's Cross that morning (that STILL did not run that day!)

Why not place a request for the information and send us a copy of anything that you receive. How exciting! We may finally get some answers to our questions...

Although, I am sorry to say that You will be sorely disappointed...

Your request will not be fulfilled and no good reason will be given for it other than a standard "refusal of access to the information" issued to you.

Try it if you don't believe me and then, when you have a letter back telling you that the Met refuses to allow you access to one single image of four men that have been blamed for the deaths of 56 people that day, ask yourself why they will not allow the nation to see such damning evidence...

And then ask yourself why the government will not allow a public inquiry...

And then ask yourself why the government would try to make it even more difficult for you to get hold of this information.

It is almost as if they have something to hide, isn't it?!