Record number twenty eight



I’ve been on this journey for over three years now.

The first Record was posted in 2013. The exact date was February 20th 2013. It’s been a long time.

I know the date I first published a Record not because I went back and looked through them all to find the right date, though I did go back to confirm it. I read the date in a letter.

Before I go through the letter, I’d like to go through the Freedom of Information Act.

The Freedom of Information Act is an Act of Parliament which was passed in 2000. It allows any member of the British public to send a letter, along with a small amount of money to cover the costs of retrieving the information, typically about £25 per hour of work it’ll require, to any public authority. Members of the public can request any information they want, and if it’s allowed (read: not personal information or anything to do with the security services) they’ll take the money and send you the information. While you can’t get your own specific personal information, you can find out what any given authority is holding on you.

The idea for the Act was conceptualised in a white paper, which is essentially a draft bill, which in itself is a precursor to a law, called Your Right To Know in 1997. It was supposed to promote a government based on mutual trust, between the government and the public. Looking around today, it doesn’t seem to have worked all that well, but the idea remains the same.

When I came home this afternoon, I found I had a letter addressed to me. At this point I’m paranoid enough (if you can ever be too paranoid), so I took it upstairs, locked the door and window, drew the blinds, and looked at it.

I didn’t recognise all the markings on the envelope, but they looked official - plenty of stamps, and most not from the postal service. One of them, however, I did recognise. It was a stamp from a hospital. It helped that the name of the hospital was written in small block capitals underneath. I tore it open and pulled out the letter.

It was that thick paper you get from the government or public authorities. You can probably see where this is going. There were several sheets of paper as well as the letter, but I left those in the envelope for the moment.

I’ve censored a few names for their own safety - you never know what nutjobs are reading this - but below is the transcript of the letter.

—

Dear Mr ■■■■■■■,

Your request for information was received. Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, we have enclosed the appropriate documents.

However, to save you the time going through each and every one of them, I thought I’d do you a favour and tell you: the answer is no. During the month of January in the year 2013, there were no patients checked in by the name of Charles Avery in any of the ten hospitals within the area you indicated. I went a step further, because the money you included was enough, and checked, just to be sure. There were no patients named Charles Avery admitted to any hospital in the country in January 2013. Furthermore, there were only three patients who were injured by electrical cabling in the entire first quarter of 2013, but none of them were in January.

I hope the information we could provide was useful.

Yours sincerely,

■■■ ■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■,

Public Health England, Department of Health executive agency

—

At this, my head started to whirl. My dad had been in tears when his brother was hurt, but he hadn’t gone to visit him in the hospital. He was too far away for that.

I took out the other pieces of paper - long lists of names, most censored for personal information - but scrawled on the first one were three words in black ink:

Not dead yet.