Paint a vulgar picture

It may seem silly to get annoyed about something that is wrong on the Internet, but there is a picture that has recently been doing the rounds on social media sites that I have found particularly irritating. You may have seen it yourself; it is the one below.

It is a picture designed to provoke outrage and if it had the intended effect you no doubt would have thought it an absolute disgrace that the majority of our MPs care more about their pay than they do about the effects of the Government’s welfare reforms on sick and disabled people. Unfortunately, the picture it paints is a false one. There was indeed a debate on 27 February about the effects of welfare reform on sick and disabled people (it was a debate on a motion put forward by the Backbench Business Committee and not on a Bill as some people assumed) and it looks like the top picture is a screen grab from BBC Parliament. The bottom picture doesn’t look like a screen grab, so its source is not entirely clear. What it almost certainly is not is a picture of what the caption claims it is, for there was no such debate and/or vote on MPs pay on 11 July 2013. It’s quite easy to check this by looking at Hansard for that day. There were questions to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the Leader of the House gave his business statement and the main business of the day was a debate on Syria followed by a debate on the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster. MPs did not debate a proposed pay rise. What did happen is that the Leader of the House, Andrew Lansley, dealt with some questions about the report published by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authroity (IPSA) on the same day which contained recommendations for MPs pay and pensions. This suggests where the date of 11 July 2013 may come from. Here is a screen grab I got from the BBC’s Democracy Live website of business questions on that day.

You can see that the House of Commons chamber is a bit fuller than it was for the debate on 27 February but it’s nowhere near as full at is in the picture that is allegedly of 11 July 2013. So what is that a picture of? The one time that you can guarantee that the chamber will be that full is at Prime Minister’s questions and it looks suspiciously like a stock photo of PMQs. It should also be pointed out that MPs don’t get to vote on their pay and allowances anyway. IPSA sets this.

The thing is, the Government doesn’t care about the effects of its welfare reforms on sick and disabled people, but misleading things like this spread around the Internet just undermine the argument. Why the need to manufacture further outrage? Someone somewhere initially posted this picture up knowing it was a manipulation of reality. Our democracy is in a bit of a fragile state at the moment. To mislead people to create further cynicism seems irresponsible.