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But at a time when public sector budgets are being slashed, it can be difficult to defend the costs of freedom of information.

Ken Thornber, leader of Hampshire County Council, said: "We spent 365,000 in 2010 answering freedom of information requests. What else could I do with that money? More social workers, more school inspectors, more spent on road maintenance."

Although the majority of requests are borne of genuine concerns, a small but significant number are vexatious or frivolous, often cited by FOI's critics as an example of wasted resources.

Thornber added: "We were asked how many drawing pins the council owns, and how many of those are presently installed in pinboards. Others have asked how much we have spent on biscuits for council meetings or on bottled water in a year.

"It's a waste of staff time to answer these questions, and every response has to be researched, written and checked by a senior officer before it goes out. We need some mechanism of deterring frivolous requests - such as a 25 charge."

A 2010 survey of local government by UCL's Constitution Unit estimated the cost of FOI at 31.6m, and that civil servants spent 1.2m hours responding to nearly 200,000 requests.

Central government received 27,294 requests during the same period. If every request costs an average of 293 and takes 7.5 hours to process - figures calculated by Frontier Economics - the total spend across central government would total 7.9m, and take an estimated 200,000 hours.

It is this money - and time - that could be put to better use, claim many in the public sector, especially when frontline services are being cut back while 270,000 jobs have been lost over the past year.

Nevertheless, it is important to keep these figures in context.

In the NHS, one recent estimate put costs at 30m, roughly equivalent to the NHS annual spend on chaplaincy.

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What price freedom (of information)?

Newspaper publishers in Missouri could have to pay more to buy paper, ink and other supplies under a measure endorsed Wednesday by a House panel. On a 7-5 vote, the House Tax Reform Committee backed a proposal to eliminate sales tax exemptions on newspaper equipment in order to help fund state medical subsidies for people who are blind. The measure now goes to the full House. The House is debating a budget this week that would eliminate a $30 million program that provides medical care to about 2,800 blind people and instead set aside $6 million for a slimmed-down aid program. Some House members want to use the money saved from those program cuts to reduce cuts to the state's public colleges and universities. Other provisions of the Missouri law allow for tax emptions for materials used in manufacturing processes. Doug Crews, the executive director of the Missouri Press Association, took issue with Silvey's characterization of newspaper tax breaks as "corporate welfare," saying the newspaper industry is a type of manufacturing business. Hannibal Courier-Post Publisher David Stringer said newspaper publishers might choose to have their papers printed in other states, potentially eliminating printing jobs in Missouri. The Courier-Post, which prints its own papers each day as well as the Moberly Monitor-Index , MaconChronicle-Herald and Kirksville Daily-Express,, is located about a few miles across the state line from Quincy, Ill., where the local newspaper also has a printing press. "The economic impact on the industry would be real and it would be significant," Stringer told committee members. "The newspaper industry in Missouri employs thousands of people and the payroll is in the tens of millions of dollars. You're putting all that at risk." A financial estimate included with the legislation approved Wednesday projects that bill could generate up to $4.2 million of additional money for state aid to the blind. House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan Silvey, who sponsored the measure, said newspapers should give up their tax exemptions because some editorial boards have called on lawmakers to eliminate tax breaks as a way of balancing the budget. "The fact that they receive this corporate welfare while advocating for the end of it for others is a bit hypocritical," said Silvey, R-Kansas City. Silvey also said he does not think eliminating the tax exemptions would interfere with a newspaper's right to press freedom. "To say your medium is so unique that it needs a tax subsidy or it's infringement on First Amendment rights, I think is just illogical," he said. "It's not their right to have a sustainable business model." To calculate how much tax revenue the legislation could generate for aid to the blind, legislative analysts estimated the total annual revenue of the newspaper industry and estimated how much of the revenue is spent on newspaper supplies. The fiscal estimate projects that revenue for newspapers sold in the state totals between about $120 million $208 million each year. The estimate cites an annual report filed by the New York Times Co. for 2011 that said costs for "raw materials" and "other costs" are equal to 17 percent to 50 percent of the newspaper's revenue. Missouri lawmakers codified the sales tax exemption for newspaper supplies in 1998, two years after the state Supreme Court ruled that computers used for newspaper pagination could not be taxed because pagination is part of the manufacturing a newspaper.

Originally posted here:
Newspaper tax breaks to end?

An Israeli ad campaign aimed at expatriates that was withdrawn last year after criticism by the American Jewish community has reappeared online and in an Israeli magazine.

A print ad, calling on Israelis living in the United States to return to Israel, appeared in Atmosphera, the magazine of El Al Airlines. The ad was in Hebrew, the Washington Jewish Week reported.

In addition, a video advertisement promoting the same message continues to appear on the website of the Israeli Ministry of Absorption.

Israeli Embassy spokesman Lior Wein-traub told the Washington Jewish Week that this particular ad is addressed exclusively to an Israeli audience and its in Hebrew. It should not be offensive to American Jewry.

The ad is similar to those posted late last year on billboards in at least five American cities, including Palo Alto, and broadcast on satellite TV channels with Israeli content.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the ads removed from the Internet and television in December after American Jews argued that they demeaned American Jewish life. jta

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Israeli ad geared to expats resurfaces

Kate Moore is a working mother, struggling to make ends meet, to raise children, to keep a spark in her marriage...and to maintain an increasingly unbearable life-defining secret. So when her husband is offered a lucrative job in Luxembourg, she jumps at the chance to leave behind her double-life, to start anew.

She begins to reinvent herself as an expat, finding her way in a language she doesnt speak, doing the housewifely things shes never before done --- playdates and coffee mornings, daily cooking and never-ending laundry. Meanwhile, her husband works incessantly, at a job Kate has never understood, for a banking client shes not allowed to know. Hes becoming distant and evasive; shes getting lonely and bored.

Then another American couple arrives. Kate soon becomes suspicious that these people are not who they say they are, and shes terrified that her own past is catching up to her. So Kate begins to dig, to peel back the layers of deception that surround her. She discovers fake offices and shell corporations and a hidden gun, a mysterious farmhouse and numbered accounts with bewildering sums of money, and finally unravels the mind-boggling long-play con that threatens her family, her marriage, and her life.

Stylish and sophisticated, fiercely intelligent and expertly crafted, THE EXPATS proves Chris Pavone to be a writer of tremendous talent.

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The Expats

PropertyAuction.com, a niche marketing website dedicated exclusively to real estate auctions, recently announced results from its survey on Real Estate Auction trends for 2011 and expectations for 2012. Industry-leading real estate auction companies participated in the annual survey with an even greater response than last year.

With the real estate market still in crisis, an influx of foreclosures and the sluggish economy, real estate auctions have become a chosen method of sale by many homeowners and professionals, says PropertyAuction.com President Ori Klein. Offering sellers an option for a time-specific liquidation of properties and buyers with a lucrative opportunity to acquire assets, the amount of auctions are increasing nationwide and being utilized for every property type.

This past January, PropertyAuction.com presented its clients with a survey to assess industry activity in 2011 and predictions for 2012. Topics included frequency of auctions by region, auction type, online bidding, mobile accessibility, the use of social networking, advertising allocation and rate of success.

2011 Trends Noteworthy findings include respondents reporting that the Southwest, Central and Southeast regions of the country had the highest amount of real estate auctions in 2011, with the West Coast states seeing the least amount of auctions. This data underscores what is reported in the media, with states like Florida and Nevada still struggling with an abundance of foreclosures.

Participants of the survey also revealed that despite utilizing print advertising as their most frequent type of marketing representing on average 44 percent of their overall budgets, signage proved to be the most effective in promoting their real estate auctions last year. Internet advertising ranked second, with print trailing in third place. This result may prove to be a determining factor for auctioneers when preparing marketing campaign budgets for 2012.

2012 Expectations Respondents were also polled on their predictions for 2012. Statistics show that homes, condominiums and co-ops will be the residential asset type most frequently brought to auction. Land will be the commercial asset type hitting the auction block the most. Real estate professionals and auctioneers also predict that the Southeast will have the highest amount of auctions, and Lender REO will be the most frequently auctioned property type in 2012.

For more information and specific results on the survey, click here.

Copyright 2011 RISMedia, The Leader in Real Estate Information Systems and Real Estate News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be republished without permission from RISMedia.

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PropertyAuction.com Releases Survey Results of Annual Real Estate Auction Industry