Disavowing a Facebook campaign

I do not use Facebook.

This is not because I disapprove of it, but there are only 24 hours in the day, and I decided it was better to use conventional campaigning techniques and one modern media - blogging - properly, than to try to use all the new media and not have time to do them effectively.

My attention has been drawn to a report in the News and Star about a facebook group which was apparently organised to vilify a Carlisle family. You can read the article here.

As I am not a Facebook user, I have not seen either the original Facebook group, or the second one which was set up after the original group was shut down. Hence all the qualifications such as "apparently" in this blog post. But according to the News and Star, the person who set up the second Facebook group used the name Chris Whiteside. If this report is correct, the individual concerned either shares my name or is abusing it.

I would like to make clear that I have no connection whatsoever with this Facebook campaign, and that I disavow it.

The benefits system in this country is not perfect. It is entirely legitimate to hold the view that people who have worked all their lives should be entitled to a greater reward for their hard work, and I have a lot of sympathy for that argument.

But launching an internet campaign of personal attacks against an individual family who do not appear to have either broken the law, or claimed anything to which they were not entitled, is not the right way to go about campaigning for reform.

If you have concerns about the benefit system, the right person to criticise is not individual claimants, the right target for criticism is the man who has ultimate responsibilty for setting up that benefit system and direct personal responsibility for taxing hard-working individuals and families to pay for it.

His name is Gordon Brown.

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