Talk:Dan Norris

Need for citations and NPOV

Several recent edits to this article seem to have removed comments which do not flatter the subject and have removed tags which show statements which need to have references to back them up. As the page is about a living person it must comply with the policy Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, specifically WP:NPOV and WP:V, and includes the appropriate actions to be taken if an editing is writing or editing an article about themselves. In particular there are several statements in the article which require citations to back them up which comply with Reliable sources, the fact tags should not be removed until suitable sources have been cited. I want this to be a good factual article about a notable individual but do not want to see it subject to an Edit war.— Rod ^talk 15:28, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The article has been extensively edited by Dan Norris MP (talk · contribs). I have left a COI warning on his talk page. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:26, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Remmoved COI tag because most of the article has since been re-edited by (presumably) neutral editors 82.32.73.70 (talk) 15:57, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I see the COI problem, but I'm unsure about the current paragraph dealing with expenses. The cited reference just lists the figures (for each expense category) and the ranking. Presumably the only reason for mentioning the expenses in the first place is because they are worthy of criticism. But that, in itself, is an interpretation. Without additional information, it's hard to say whether the expenses were in any way out of the ordinary, or not (and in the latter case, there probably shouldn't be a paragraph on them at all). Markus Poessel (talk) 13:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Stance on Freedom of Information

Further problem: the paragraph about Norris being for or against Freedom of Information. Currently, it reads:

"Despite Norris's claims that he is a keen fighter for freedom of information, he has voted against 9 out of 14 parliamentary investigations or inquiries into the Iraq war since 4th June 2003. For the other 5, Norris was either absent or he abstained. However he was the only MP of any political party in the whole of the West Country (and one of just 25 out of the 121 MP who voted on this bill) who voted for Freedom of Information laws to apply to MPs' allowances at the crucial Third Reading vote on this key issue on 18 May 2007."

- the first problem is the count. Of these "14 parliamentary investigations or inquiries into the Iraq war", 8 are in fact pairs of motions (in each of the four cases, there were two motions, with different wording, on the same day). To count these as separate instances is pretty dubious.

The next question is whether these are Freedom of Information issues at all. In the first case (4 Jun 2003), the matter was not so much whether there was to be an inquiry, but whether there was to be an independent inquiry, as opposed to an inquiry by the Intelligence and Security committee (the latter version was passed without a vote). The second case (16 Jul 2003) was along the same lines (judicial inquiry vs. Intelligence and Security committee). The third case (10 Sep 2003) does not appear to be about any inquiries and investigations at all. The third (22 Oct 2003, two versions) was about the committee investigations being sufficient or not. The 13 Jan 2004 motion was about censuring the government for failures in supplying the troops with proper equipment; no FoI issue that I can see. The 9 Mar 2004 motion is indeed about FoI - "This House believes that all advice prepared by the Attorney-General on the legality of the war in Iraq should be published in full." The 17 May 2004 motion does not appear to address any FoI issues at all. 31 Oct 2006: this is about inquiries; the counter-motion leaves open the possibility to do so at a later date. 11 Jun 2007 ditto. 25 Mar 2008 ditto, but the motion that passed explicitly noted "that a time will come when an inquiry is appropriate".

All in all, only one of the motions is about a Freedom of Information issue in the narrow sense (publishing the Attorney-General's advice). Six of the motions were about setting up independent inquiries; the main issues were a) finding the right forum of inquiries, b) were the previous inquiries sufficient or not, and c) when is the right time for an inquiry. In all of which cases, FoI is a side issue; unless there's further information, voting behaviour doesn't allow any deductions about the MP's attitudes towards FoI. Three of the motions counted do not appear to have any FoI issues attached to them at all.

In light of these problems, I will now replace the version cited above with a much shorter one that only lists the one FoI issue. Markus Poessel (talk) 13:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't even list the one remaining FoI motion. I had forgotten that, on the motion about the Attorney-General's advice Norris didn't vote "against", he was simply absent (which can mean a lot of things). So right now, the only thing remaining is the factual statement that Norris voted for MP's having to disclose their expenses. Markus Poessel (talk) 13:50, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

POV

This article reads a little like it was written by the man himself. A quick glance into the history shows that a lot of the stuff that sounds very strange, was written by someone using the cunning user name Dan Norris MP. Sorry Dan, tempting though it is, it isn't really etiquette to write your own article. We should definitely have a clean up, and make it sound less like a "VOTE FOR ME" article. 131.111.186.95 (talk) 09:58, 20 April 2010 (UTC)