"New guidance will mean that there will be more crime mapping: a paper published by the Cabinet Office … notes … that ‘Police forces are due to provide standardised local information on crime, starting from Summer 2008 …’"

"Ah yes, the fear of knowing too much. Why don’t we just buy houses without ever seeing them? Why do we bother getting them surveyed? If house prices are affected, might it not also push up prices in places that don’t have crime?"

"If you can think of what you’d like to do with data from the Land Registry, Companies House or the Met Office, then you could be in line to be the first to benefit from it - and show the benefits of making more data free."

"Andrew Gilligan, having been shortlisted for his reports into Ken Livingstone’s spending as Mayor of London, has been at pains to stress the importance of publicly available information on the web to his investigation."