"Officials threatened to eject journalists from a press conference yesterday
if they persisted in asking Ms Ginn for her view of these arrangements."
(from The Guardian 30th January).
You may recognise Ms Ginn as Jay Ginn - a Radstats activist. Why did the
officials want to prevent journalists from asking her questions? The
Guardian Report gives the background. Jay Ginn is co-author of a report on
womens' pensions published in Social Trends. The report of the press
conference states.
"Ministers want to target extra spending on the poorest pensioners through
income support, but Ms Ginn and her co-author Sara Arber said: "Claiming
means-tested benefits is considered by many to signify shameful dependency.
Yet many British pensioners, especially women, need income support mainly
because the basic state pension provides an increasingly inadequate income
and they were unable to obtain a good state second pension or private
pension due to their caring roles."
So it seems that the ONS prevented further discussion of this topic by
threatening ejection. And it appears that the threatening was done by
officials who are supposed to be committed to a statistical service
independent of the Government.
Ray Thomas.
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