The DWP has failed in its attempts to get a satirical twitter account closed and then take over the account for its own use. Although the @UKJCP account was suspended by twitter, it has now been reinstated with an increased number of followers as a result of the publicity it has received.{jcomments on}
The @UKJCP twitter account regularly pokes fun at Jobcentre plus and refused to desist after the DWP tweeted:
“@UKJCP Can you stop RT tweets we have not written - it is not satire and is confusing to customers. It also exceeds your twitter agreement”
The DWP then complained directly to twitter, asking for the account to be closed and the account name given to them to use. The grounds for wanting the account closed down were that:
“The @UKJCP account has been set up with deliberate and malicious intent to devalue and criticise the work of Jobcentre Plus. In addition, there are a number of rude and potentially libelous tweets aimed at UK government, elected politicians and the heads of large private sector organisations who are committed to working with government on reducing unemployment.”
Clearly, being rude about the government, or the heads of large private sector organisations, is an activity that must be stamped on whenever it occurs as far as the DWP is concerned
And it looked at first like twitter agreed: on 28 January, twitter suspended the @UKJCP account.
But, perhaps due to the adverse publicity, on 8 February twitter reinstated the account - which saw an immediate leap in the number of its followers.
In fact, at the time of writing the entirely asset free @UKJCP has 12,200 followers whilst the massively tax-funded @dwpgovuk account has just 100 more.
We very much hope that once our newsletter goes out on Wednesday 12th February, Benefits and Work members will ensure that @UKJCP streaks ahead.
With thanks to Tom Pride for highlighting this story
