Iain Duncan Smith accused of planning to ‘fudge’ benefit death stats – Mirror Online
Campaigners (like Vox Political’s Mike Sivier) say Iain Duncan Smith is trying to fudge the figures.
View it as blowing my own trumpet if you like, but This Writer could not let the quiet announcement that the DWP will be publishing its doctored death statistics go by without a splash in the papers.
The Daily Mirror has been brilliant on this whole story and its latest article continues the run:
The department [of work and pensions] today announced a series of documents will be published on Thursday August 27th, detailing the number of deaths for people on out-of-work benefits, Employment and Support Allowance, Incapacity Benefit or Severe Disablement Allowance.
But campaigners worry the Government intend to ‘fudge’ the figures – releasing them in a form that’s impossible to compare to previous releases.
Mike Sivier, the blogger whose Freedom of Information Request sparked the DWP’s panic, said the release is unlikely to include the actual number of deaths.
Instead, the department has signalled that they’ll publish “Age-Standardised Mortality Rates (ASMR)” – ratios of deaths of claimants when compared with the population as a whole.
Mike Sivier said: “It is remarkable that, after three years of inactivity, the Conservative Government has rushed these ‘fudged’ figures into publication so soon after I won an appeal against the Department for Work and Pensions, meaning the actual numbers – not the ASMR fudge – would have to be published.”
Source: Iain Duncan Smith accused of planning to ‘fudge’ benefit death stats – Mirror Online
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Well done Mike and keep up the good work.
Wow check you out!!! Well done Mike, I know the battle isn’t over but you have done a great job highlighting the gross misconduct of the DWP, and now you are getting well earned recognition!!!
Heh, heh, congrats Mike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kujsJi3Z9M
At least your efforts are causing great concern amongst the ranks Mike and they are on the back foot.
It will be all lies and misconstrued statistics at more expense to the tax payer. One would think a whistle blower would come out of the woodwork from the DWP to tell the true facts
about their murderous regime.
Surely they would become a national hero overnight if one did blow the DWP cover up.
We all await the 27th of August to see more injustice from this evil shower.
Well done Mike you deserve the recognition for all your hard work.
Keep at ’em Mike. I’m sure that you’ll get the better of the dishonest corrupt liar, Duncan-Smith.
Didnt I say they would lie but someone said they cant well they do whot they like these devils jeff3
Well done Mike, keep up the good work. Be prepared for “carefully bland” facts and figures designed to hide the reality.
On a different subject, did you see this on the Huffington Post? It has received almost no other coverage in the media, but I think it is a huge scandal that our railways are subsidising those in other nations:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/08/18/foreign-state-owned-railway-british-train-companies-revenue_n_8003970.html?1439910763
I am really grateful to you Mike, as I am sure thousands of us are, for keeping up the pressure on this sort of cover-up. With the sort of attitude which I can only describe as similar to a “fetish” being perpetrated by this department against vulnerable people I do not expect a straight and comprehensible reply. I do expect though, that the original decision which you have fought so hard to obtain is maintained.
They’re not going to get out of it. The M.P.s who made specific reference to the actual figures required will keep bringing the matter up, and there’s the tribunal, so the release of these figures (and of course we know how well the DWP use statistics) won’t make a jot of difference.
Of course, ill people are perhaps going to die earlier – some don’t and live with a severe illness most of their lives – but the point is that you don’t expect a large number of deaths in groups of people that have been found fit for work or put in the WRAG. That is the info we want.
Congratulations Mike on continuing to place this in the msm public arena!
and one remarkable, determined person can’t change the world?
Well done!
x
Another great blog by Mike over at Vox politcal