The DWP has responded to the storm of outrage over Valentine benefit fraud tweet – and it’s as daft as you’d expect
The Valentine’s Day campaign from the DWP should remind us how hard love actually is on benefits [Image: Prospect composite].
“We didn’t intend to offend anybody,” came the hapless comment to PR Week.
“We regularly use significant dates in the calendar to help communicate our policies and did so for a number of issues on Valentine’s Day.”
So the DWP’s policies include telling isolated people they are not believed, threatening couples with jail, tearing families apart and pushing people to suicide. That’s ‘caring Conservatism’ for you!
Bear in mind that the DWP habitually refuses entirely legitimate benefit claims for the most specious reasons – sometimes in defiance of its own evidence.
This time, the backlash was exactly what the DWP and its Tory paymasters deserved.
As well as stirring up a hornet’s nest of social-media ire, national media outlets including the New Statesman responded angrily to the social comms. A piece on the magazine’s website was particularly angry about a link included in the tweet to a Daily Express article about benefit fraudsters, while the publication cited figures that suggest the amount of benefits paid out to scammers is minimal and offset by underpayments.
The Express piece gave examples of fraudsters, including a Leicester woman who wrongfully received £83,370 in benefits by falsely claiming she was single.
The article also quoted James Blake from the DWP’s counter-fraud and compliance directorate. “Relationships have their ups and downs but not telling us when your circumstances change is a crime and the shameless few involved are deliberating diverting money away from those who really need it,” he warned.
“True love may be hard to come by but benefits cheats aren’t difficult to track down.”
Source: DWP responds to social storm over Valentine’s Day benefit fraud tweet | PR Week
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Now I can’t remember the actual figures, but benefit fraud pales into insignificance compared to tax dodging. I do recall the former is millions whereas the latter is billions. I’m sure you have this on file. Might be a good idea to remind people.
HEART ATTACK UNDER PIP = SANCTION PIP said having Heart ATTACK IS WELCOME TO CUT YOUR INCOME
https://youtu.be/LGGyhXnVkCs?t=2m15s
Namaste :)
When DWP break the law that is a crime as well. Every time a claimant suffers, every occasion there is a claimant suicide, that is also a crime against humanity. Are DWP ever prosecuted for neglect, for manslaughter, for being the political organisation responsible for administering death sentences and suffering to the most vulnerable in society on behalf of the fascist Tory government: these are crimes as well and those responsible for DWP policy need prosecuting alongside the politicians putting signatures to government policy. DWP are as complicit as the fascist state they pander to. One only need mention McVey and bedroom tax to see the disgusting contemptuous reality of DWP. It’s rotten to the very core and even now when there is major media exposure and freedom of information requests being made readily available, still the DWP try to make more and more people suffer by restricting benefit, constricting eligibility, and doing their utmost to destroy more and more people’s lives. Why do DWP do this, why do they invent policy that causes suffering to so many? How do the DWP keep avoiding prosecution? Where are the Human Rights Lawyers when the public actually need them?
Mr. Corbyn needs to take a big-axe to the DWP and cleave out the rotten core from which a defective self-serving organisation is growing but failing the public miserably and in the process destroying all faith in its credibility and alleged ‘impartiality’. The DWP is a failed organisation detached and distant from the customer and from the underlying principles upon which it was created. The DWP needs a major overhaul from the very top down: the public do not want to be held at ransom by wannabe gangsters who want Knighthood’s. The public want truth, fairness, common-sense, integrity, understanding, and most of all transparency in every process.
Mr Corbyn has an awful lot of work to do to restore public confidence in all facets of government and that also includes Councils and the councillors who overpay themselves to do nothing. Power structures in the UK have taken their lead from Tory government and believe they are immune from prosecution and can act with impunity doing whatever they want. This needs to change. The entire political system in the UK needs destroying and rebuilding from grass-roots upwards in order to start serving the people first and then the capitalists, money men, and army of sponges addicted to money.
Personally, I will happy when Wales devolves and starts governing itself effectively: and that means socialism restoring equality, fraternity, and fairness to this great country called Wales.
Power to the People. The future is victorious, the future is Red!
Namaste :)
DN
THE REAL BENEFIT CHEATS ARE THE D.W.P FOR THE DISGRACEFUL SANCTIONS REGIME.