Reddit mentions of The Road to Southend Pier: One man's struggle against the surveillance society

kinda a dubious article, there are legitimate reasons such things might be asked especially if they're linked to other enquiries or studies - the dragon attack for example might be a loon scared of dragons or it might be someone that's got a legitimate reason to believe someone in Wigan Council is doing one of the most common forms of corruption at local council level paying themselves to spend time on their hobby; maybe someone might have been using local council money to purchase books on defending against dragons or some such nonsense, maybe the person who filed this request was interesting in proving this book could not be for official use... or maybe they were looking for another common form of corruption and one which is probably what the pet possession person was worried about, people using tax money to pay for pointless services which they supply...

also despite what the text of the article says the request was for

>How many times has the council paid for the services of an exorcist, psychic or religious healer? Were the services performed on an adult, child, pet or building? (Rossendale Council)

which basically means 'are you wasting money on scams?'

while questions like 'How many bodies are there in mortuaries that have been unclaimed for 10 years?' could very well relate to comments some idiot has made, maybe a budding Borris Johnson is trying to push through some nonsense on the basis that the morgues are full of unclaimed bodies that've been over a decade - maybe someone is simply trying to prove if this is or isn't the case.

>How many people in the town have a licence to keep a tiger, lion, leopard, lynx or panther as a pet?

this could be a local business doing market research which is actually one of the things the information request system was set up to facilitate or it could be an animal rights group keen to expose the rare-breed menageries of Scarborough but it's most likely because they're working on a story detailing the black cat sightings in Scalby Mills

and the how many Southend care home kids have been microchiped is a very good question, the town did talk about microchipping the elderly for example - the person sending that request was most likely working on a book about the surveillance state, possibly this one http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Southend-Pier-surveillance/dp/1905641443

There is not a single thing on that list that does have a plausable reason which would make it a compelling question - these might all be from nutters but they might not be, if they're even considering suggesting for a second that they should be allowed to throw out requests they deem as 'silly' then they can fuck right off.