{"id":66,"date":"2016-03-02T00:42:27","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T00:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/?p=66"},"modified":"2016-03-02T00:42:27","modified_gmt":"2016-03-02T00:42:27","slug":"ian-duncan-smith-and-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/ian-duncan-smith-and-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Iain Duncan Smith and “facts”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Times<\/em> on 29 February had a surprising front page story <\/a> about the “Rising fury of ministers muzzled over Brexit”.<\/p>\n

The vocal complainant was Iain Duncan Smith, upset that civil servants in his department were being asked to produce “propaganda” to support Britain’s remaining in the EU.<\/p>\n

The snag is that that Times<\/em> article says they were sharing facts about the levels of benefits claimed by migrants from other EU countries.<\/p>\n

But with migrants from EU countries paying very much more in taxes than the take out of the system in benefits, this looks a little weak. It gives the impression of Iain Duncan Smith being keen to stop his civil servants circulating facts that don’t support his case.<\/p>\n

So: does he expect us to vote on the facts, or to dismiss as “propaganda” facts that don’t support his position? That’s not a sane way to make a decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Times on 29 February had a surprising front page story about the “Rising fury of ministers muzzled over Brexit”. The vocal complainant was Iain Duncan Smith, upset that civil servants in his department were being asked to produce “propaganda” to support Britain’s remaining in the EU. The snag is that that Times article says … Continue reading “Iain Duncan Smith and “facts””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}