A most appropriate double-page spread (above) from the Sun set the scene for Iain Duncan Smith to be caught with his pants down — not in a disabled toilet this time — twice in one week.
LIE ONE: Iain just loves to claim that Britain is full of inter-generational shirkers:
“often three generations of the same family have never worked”
Except academics have found that this , errr, isn’t true. Even the data used by IDS’ own department gives “clear evidence” that even two-generation-never-working-families are rare. Another study sent researchers out to deprived areas of Glasgow and Middlesbrough looking for such a skiving brood — they couldn’t find one.
LIE TWO: The apposite Sun feature shown above provided a platform for IDS to whinge that the BBC were unfairly targeting him — by using the words “cuts” instead of “reform”:
“The word ‘reform’ very rarely passes their lips but the word ‘cuts’ is always in their broadcasts.”
But according to IDS’ own measure, the BBC provides him the most sympathetic coverage of any media outlet in a cross section examined by Scrapbook – proportionately mentioning the word “reform” more than any other in comparison with the word “cuts”:
While references to “reform” trump “cuts” in all the material we examined, the BBC is the fairest, using “cuts” in 16.7% more web pages than IDS’ prefered word. In contrast, the Daily Mail references “cuts” in 30.5% more articles than “reform”. Even The Sun — from which Duncan Smith launched his attack — seems to prefer the language of anti-austerity campaigners to DWP spin.
And it’s not the first time he’s been caught out using dodgy stats.
