Mark Ferguson
Is there no vulnerability too profound to elude the attentions of the spin meister of Labour list – one Mark Ferguson? Should I really be expecting a higher standard from the Editor of a rag started by Dolly Draper, aided and abetted by Damian McBride…?
Yesterday he took a small faux pas by the Mother of a profoundly disabled man, which in itself had been elaborated on by a local rag, based on a radio interview with the family, and turned it into an anti-Tory rant, willingly knee jerked into national prominence by the Twitterati that follow him.
‘He’s had his benefits cut’ – could this be true? Save yourself the trouble – naturally it wasn’t, certainly not in the sense inferred by Mark Ferguson! I followed the story. It led me to an interview on the Tay fm radio site.
John Kerr is profoundly disabled and has been since birth. It follows that someone in his immediate family has always been responsible for accessing the financial benefits that taxpayers provide to care for him. Always.
Since we are not told John’s age, we can only make the assumption that he has recently come of age which would trigger a change in his benefits to an ‘adult’ rate. Possibly. Certainly the Department of Work’s and Pensions sent out a form that ‘someone’ needed to fill in to ascertain how much help he was entitled to. He hadn’t been ‘called in’ for a reassessment to see if he was fit for work – he had been sent a form to be filled in on his behalf.
The ‘someone’ responsible for filling in this form, we are told, is his Mother Dawn, she felt she was too fully occupied caring for John to spend time on filling it out – she gave it to ‘someone else’ to fill in. They didn’t finish the job. Thus the DWP receiving a half completed form.
If you ‘half complete’ a mortgage form, you won’t get the mortgage – or the house. It won’t be the evil Tories making you homeless.
If you ‘half complete’ a marriage contract, you won’t be legally married. It won’t be the evil Tories turning you into a fallen woman!
However, where benefits are concerned, and Labourlist, everything is the fault of the evil Tories.
John, who couldn’t possibly have given his informed consent to the ensuing publicity, found himself the latest poster child in the battle for anti-Tory pot shots. ‘Send us your poor, your huddled masses, your desperately vulnerable – and we will feed them through the spin machine and cynically use them to further our aim of unseating the incumbent government’.
Within a few hours, the article and Ferguson’s Twitter had been mindlessly repeated across the land. Ferguson added insult to injury by saying that it was a ‘Hell of a system in place, that they could send a blind man a letter’. Presumably Ferguson thinks that being blind means that you should no longer be treated with dignity by government agencies, the ‘does he take sugar’ syndrome perhaps?
Yes, the letter was addressed to John. Yes, someone else needed to read it to him. Yes, it did say that no further benefits would be paid after June 7th – he hadn’t applied for any! Yes, they can appeal against this decision and complete an application form – as they could have done in the first place.
Did the caring Labour spin meisters to whose attention this was drawn do anything to help the family? Make contact and offer help with filling in the form? Did they heck! They used the non-story to whip up their 5,000 odd supporters into a flurry of ‘disgraceful’, ‘stop attacking vulnerable people, oh whoops, forgot, that’s what Tories do best’, ‘this is disgusting, makes me hate the Tories even more’…and so on, and so on.
Well Mr Ferguson? Did the caring civil servants in the Department of Works and Pensions continue to pay benefits to people who hadn’t applied for them, when Gordon Brown was in power? Should blind people be considered sub-citizens who no longer have mail addressed to them? Is someone that vulnerable really a suitable subject to be publicised in 140 characters on your beloved Twitter?
You can say something very quickly on Twitter but you can’t say anything very subtle or intelligent or in-depth […]if you’re not credible, if you’re saying things that are inaccurate, you’ll be pulled up on it. There’s more space online to be pulled up for inaccuracies than there is in newspaper. And if you’re inaccurate, people will stop reading […] So I am as qualified or unqualified as anyone else and happy to be judged on the merits of what I publish.
Good! I’m pulling you up on that disgraceful Tweet. It was misleading, misinformed, and should have been beneath you to use the difficulties that a family was in through no fault of the DWP to score a cheap political point.
AnnaRaccoon
Note: A guest post by Anna Raccoon
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1
May 21, 2012 at 14:45 -
Anna,
Quite understand why you have now demoted yourself; might I just say – thanks for an excellent blog, caring, provocative & literate. Take care and have fun!
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May 21, 2012 at 18:13 -
Bravo and seconded Jeremy, and well done our new “Impact Player” (One who comes of the bench from time to time and changes the game).
G the M
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May 21, 2012 at 15:21 -
Its funny that those who scream loudest about a vulnerable person being exploited are unable to sense the irony when exploiting the same person for their own purposes. Except I suppose, they are always right so it doesn’t matter.
Nice to hear your clear voice again Anna. The pub was running very nicely and then it got even better when you dropped by.
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May 21, 2012 at 15:25 -
So – Master Ferguson is skilfully manipulating the facts (in a similar manner to Uri Geller with spoons) in order to score a non-existent propaganda victory over the evil, baby-eating Tories. Imagine my shock, horror and surprise.
Great to see a special guest appearance by the Landlady! May it be one of many. Dieu vous bénisse. -
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May 21, 2012 at 15:30 -
Why do they do this? There is plenty of real ammunition for attacking the Tories, who can’t even rely on the loyalty of their core voters. Cameron is responsible for many things but this isn’t one of them.
Anyway, thanks for the fuller picture, without which it is very easy to be spun. (Aren’t you supposed to be studying holiday brochures and sticking pins in a map?)
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May 21, 2012 at 18:16 -
“He’s blind, he’s deaf, he’s fed with a tube”-so when his ballot arrives in the mail, a liebour campaigner takes it and some other identification and votes for him!
Liebour cares.
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10
May 21, 2012 at 18:27 -
Hi Anna, good to know you will still be aroudn to make the occasional devastating-as-ever post.
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May 21, 2012 at 18:33 -
Labour supporters (and the wretched Illiberal Deomcrats) are as bad as the spin doctors. It takes a conscious effort to believe this b.s.
Every time I post on my blog about some “victims of society” who turn out to be not quite as helpless and marginalised as they claim I get lefties and bleeding hearts telling me what a callous, uncaring person I am.And of course when I ridicule Cameron’s parenting classes I get told the only thing wrong with the idea is it doesn’t go far enough.
No unqualified person should be allowed to care for a baby unless a properly trained bureaucrat is standing overthem filling in forms, I guess.
When does the revolution start?
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May 21, 2012 at 18:57 -
There’s unfortunately little surprise about Labour’s descent into the moral wasteland. These scum want power without responsibility and will twist facts to suit their vile intent.
Welcome back Anna! (Although the bar’s been running fairly well, your style and insights have been missed.) -
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May 21, 2012 at 19:04 -
Another thought provoking blog… Thank goodness we can (hopefully) look forward to more from the ‘ne plus ultra’ of Internet blogging!
Regarding the content. Who was it said ‘…Never let the truth ruin a good story.’ Some say Mark Twain, but the execrable Mark Ferguson should not be spoken of in the same sentence… Oops!
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May 21, 2012 at 20:24 -
Good to know you haven’t really left us
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May 21, 2012 at 21:05 -
Labour apparatchik twists facts and uses vulnerable person for party political advantage?
Erm…..not the first time, is it? Won’t be the last, either. Desperate scum do desperate things.
Good work by Anna (as always!) in finding the basic facts of the matter, and bringing them to general attention.
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May 21, 2012 at 23:54 -
Welcome back!
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May 22, 2012 at 06:51 -
Interesting nom de plume, are you a ‘Thetford Forest’ devotee ? ( A joke in the worst possible taste from Guido’s !)
You should all realise that any deliberate distortion is perfectly acceptable by the ‘just nicer, better people’, when aimed at the Tories. -
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May 22, 2012 at 07:10
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May 22, 2012 at 08:51 -
You kept us waiting but didn’t disappoint. A cracking post as ever Anna. I don’t know anything about twitterings. Is there not a way of counter-twitting the same twits as he tweeted….or something!
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