The Pinocciho Award: What is it and Why’s it necessary

Some awards will be given out by the STUC as part of There is a Better Way campaign. The Pinocchio award is for misleading the public and misrepresenting the economic situation.


Yes it’s a bit of fun. And it’s also a good opportunity for trade unionists and others to get involved in the campaign and even to vent a little frustration about some of the things that are being said by politicians and commentators in the media. But there is also a more serious side to it.

We think that there is such a control of ideas at the moment that there is no debate about the economic decisions that are being made and no scrutiny of the motivations that are driving these decisions. The coalition Government simply insists that we have no alternative and no one is allowed to challenge this.

But actually it simply isn’t true that they have no option and they must act to cut the deficit. If you look at what the economic data is actually saying (and we have – see our myths of the recession page) you will quickly realise that actually we don’t have to go down the route of austerity measures. We simply are not now, nor will we become Greece.

So the cuts in public spending that this Government are making are a political choice like any other. And frankly we object to the McCarthy/Bush like ‘you are either with us or against us’ comments that we have been hearing from the coalition Government recently. George Osborne calls us deficit deniers and insists that we are out of touch with reality. Well sorry George we simply aren’t going to sit back and accept this insidious attempt to marginalise any opposition.

We will fight back.

We will fight back with economic arguments, with our feet on the streets and by challenging the myths and the mistruths that are peddled like fact.

They say there is no alternative.

We say there is a better way.

Helen Martin - STUC