Free Born John is the blog of Peter Risdon who was responsible for the March for Free Expression last year. Peter has been watching Michael Gove's efforts to find out just how much money the Government has been throwing at the Moslem Council of Britain. Gove has been doing the rounds of the departments asking each in turn how much they have paid out. Some have responded, others including the FCO and Communities and Local Government have refused citing a lack of centrally held information.

As Peter points out this is a shocking state of affairs when we can't find out how much money has been paid out to an organisation which, as an unincorporated association doesn't have to publish accounts. We have no idea how much the crooks in Westminster have paid out nor what it has been spent on. It's pretty amazing that the crooks in Westminster themselves have nary a clue whether the money has gone towards its purported purpose or whether it has in fact gone on swanky living, loose women or worse.

It's also incredible that this information can't be ascertained without, apparently, unreasonable cost. To work out the spend for a single account through a ledger of some sort should be a query that would take less than sixty seconds. How many ledgers do these departments have? Or do they have no financial controls at all? 

I haven't been able to leave a comment at Free Born John, but here's a thought. The internal financial structure of each department must be known, and, one would imagine, is not a state secret. If Michael Gove were to address the same question to the minister in terms of the spend from the main ledgers then presumably he could at least get a handle on the size of spend. Anyone know if this information - ie the location of each of the main ledgers within a department - is public?