It's fair to say that the militant wing of the nationalist movement is really struggling with the death of the DWP letter on pensions. Most have gone into denial, to the point of refusing to believe the FOI letter or even to suggest that the brilliant https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ was a fake website!
But today it took an altogether darker turn. An old boss of mine brought to my attention a tweet (forgive me I wont link to it for reasons that will become clear) from iScot magazine published by Ken McDonald.
Here we were presented with the zombie DWP letter and an email which is not redacted (the redactions above and below are my own). In this email a DWP press officer notes that the letter is from the DWP and "its content is correct".
You'll note that McDonald copies in Campbell and asked him to Retweet it. And Retweet it he did, as did many other nats, 264 (8 hours later) in fact.
Now you'll note that the email doesn't tell us which letter the Press Officer was commenting on, but let's give Ken the benefit of the doubt. We also dont know the context provided to the press officer by Ken and there I wouldn't give him any benefit, for the reasons you are about to see.
A junior press officer in London can make mistakes, I know I've worked with press offices for 20 years and they can be prone to errors as any good journalist would tell you.
The trouble was that Ken McDonald decided to publish the email without redacting it to protect the civil servant, Campbell would have seen this when he Retweeted it but has no ethical issues with publishing a public servant's personal details online.
So in my capacity on the Scotland In Union Advisory Board I called the press officer (after all I along with lots of people on twitter now had his phone number) and explained the situation. Suffice to say he was hopping mad and furious that his details had been published, I provided him with as much information as I could and he attempted to contact Ken McDonald, however it turns out Ken wasn't replying anymore!
I also discussed the FoI with the Press Officer in question and he apologised for not knowing about it and said he would look into where his wires had got crossed. We're still in correspondence, however any journalist worth their salt (so that excludes McDonald and Campbell) knows that a repeated and detailed answer to an FOI following an investigation into an error is going to be far better informed of the detail than a London based press officer. That's doubly so when the press officer is confirming what appears to be a valid DWP letter in what is likely a very dubious context provided by someone like McDonald with evidently no ethics at all.
However if you are desperate. If the fundamental error at the heart of the Wee Blue Book continues to unravel in front of your eyes then you'll believe, say and Retweet anything. That's no excuse for shoddy journalism and throwing a source under the bus. I expected better from the likes of Campbell and McDonald, but I guess my already low opinion of them was too high.
UPDATE:
Following my last FOI some nationalists decided to try to asks the question in a different way in the desperate hope of getting a different answer. They've failed again.
The question:
"I am a British citizen born in Scotland. If Scotland becomes an independent country, will I still be entitled to a UK pension ?"
The response:
"In the event of an independent Scottish state, State Pensions and benefits in Scotland for its citizens would be the responsibility of a Scottish Government. Therefore, any questions about entitlements in an independent Scottish state would, in that eventuality, be directed to the Scottish Government. "
A word perfect reiteration of the position we already know. This simply puts more weight on the line of thought that McDonald played fast and loose with his context in what he presented to the Press Officer and exactly what the Press Officer was replying to.
At some point the nationalists are just going to have to admit they lied about pensions during the independence referendum and they are still lying about them.
No comments:
Post a Comment