Reblogged from The SKWAWKBOX Blog:
I’d like to enlist your help – both directly and by sharing this post widely so that lots of others do the same and momentum is built and maintained on the issue.
I posted this morning about the second rebuke the Tories, in particular the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has received for blatant and extreme distortions of statistics to demonise benefit claimants – in the latter instance, a completely unfounded suggestion that almost 900,000 disability benefit claimants suddenly dropped their claims rather than face a medical assessment.
A brilliant idea was posted as a comment on that article, and I need your help to use it to turn up the Parliamentary pressure for Iain (Duncan) Smith and Grant Shapps to be held to account for lying to the British public and (in Smith’s case at least) to Parliament.
Theyworkforyou.com has a very simple search function that allows you to identify, and contact, your MP. Please send a quick email to your MP – no matter which party he represents – with the link to the article (http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/we-did-it-tories-now-spanked-by-uksa-for-blatant-esa-distortion/) on the latest rebuke by the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) and asking her/him to both raise the issue in Parliament and to write back to you confirming their unequivocal condemnation of this abuse of statistics to demonise the vulnerable.
If you get a reply (a proper one, not an auto-acknowledgement!), please forward it to me at ccgwatch@gmail.com and I will compile them into an article so that others can see whether their MP is prepared to properly condemn something that is unarguably worthy of condemnation, or makes excuses for it and for those who have done it. Those who wish to can then use that response to help inform their voting decision at the next general election.
If enough people do this, it should help raise the heat on Smith and Shapps and make clear that they are still duty-bound, even under this government, to do what once used to be considered the ‘decent thing’ if you were caught in outright lies to your constituents and to the House.
Thanks for your help!
