Benefit Britain. Life on the dole. What they don’t show:

This time last year I wrote about a TV show called Skint. It focused on a few hand-picked families and highlighted the lack of morals and the lack of willingness to work or even get dressed on our council estates. I argued that the programme did not reflect real life and was by no means representative of the norm.

12 months on and channel 5 bring us benefits Britain; Life on the dole. This week’s episode featured families with lots of children living in workless homes. It focused on the number of children one man had and the number of mothers he had fathered them with. It focused on a single mother with 5 children (all to the same Dad). At one point during the programme, the mother is seen saying that she doesn’t think she should get any more money as the cash she gets buys food and pays the rent but doesn’t extend to luxuries. The narrator didn’t say anything at this point but the camera cleverly panned round to show one of the children sitting playing on an iPad.
There was a separate family on the programme that had so many children that the local council had knocked through into the vacant property next door so that there was sufficient room for the family to live in. The Dad said that he had received hate mail and threats.
Nowhere on the show did it say why any of the people featured didn’t have a job nor did it say if they had tried to get one or indeed ever had one. It did show one dad riding his mobility scooter which he was given due to his ill health. Nowhere did the producers offer any alternatives or solutions; choosing instead to sensationalise and mislead the viewers into believing this is normal. It didn’t give any statistics such as how many families have more than the morally acceptable 2.4 children either.

There was another programme on BBC2 the same night called Police under pressure. This show featured two nearby estates in Sheffield, one which has anti-social behaviour issues and one which has a lot of racial tension. Parson Cross, one of the city’s biggest housing estates, has been the subject of a section 30 order, meaning curfews are in place to stop unruly kids roaming the streets at night, terrorising local residents and businesses. The order has now finished and Police officers are focusing their attention and limited man power on the Page Hall estate, which has had a large number of Romany’s move onto the predominantly Pakistani community. The two groups are at disharmony for several reasons, one of which is the Pakistani resident’s objection to their culture and practice of congregating on the street in large groups. The camera crews interviewed community leaders and Pakistani residents voicing their views, as well as Police officers voicing their concerns that some of the trouble may be racially motivated.

I doubt the programme did much to ease tensions in the area. It briefly glossed over the fact that the Police’s hands are tied by outdated and pointless rules as well as being grossly under manned, due to the government cuts to the force.

It stated that one female officer had been assaulted by a youth on the Parson Cross estate, but failed to offer any explanation as to why the youths had nothing better to do in the evenings.
Why do these shows insist on highlighting the problems and offer no suggestion of a resolution to them? They continue to paint a distorted picture of life in Britain, leading the ignorant viewer to conclude that council estates in Northern cities are awash with feral kids running riot, abusing the authorities at the cost of the hard working tax payer. It is simply not representative of the majority of estates up and down the country. True, there are families like those portrayed on the shows. There are people in this country who are third generation never been employed’s. there are even some people who just knock out children in order to gain child benefit and a home.

 

What does that say about the benefits system and the housing system? Surely if there were sufficient houses built at affordable prices then this would reduce the effects. Like-wise, the very fact that generations of households have never known paid employment is not a reflection of those families but a reflection of the failures of successive governments to address the problem.  

Barely any of our elected members of parliament and none of the current Government is working class. Very few of them have had a job outside of politics. A lot of them are millionaires. I’m not suggesting that this excludes them from having an opinion but it does inhibit their ability to have an educated one. Even the Labour party, the party of the workers, is made up almost entirely of privately educated career politicians- mainly males that have little actual hands on knowledge of council estates.

One simple solution would perhaps be to ask the electorates opinion, rather than passing judgement on it. I have said to several local politicians that no one from any of the main parties have knocked on my door for my views. All of them have denied this accusation.

The conclusion I draw from this is that they come during the day, assuming that as I live on a council estate, I will not have a job. I do.

The main party’s trip over themselves to fight the marginal and the influential seats, but take for granted the vote of people like me. Their assumptions have been instrumental in the rise in popularity of parties like UKIP. In turn the success of UKIP in places like Rotherham opens the doors to even less savoury groups like the EDL and the BNP, who have been travelling around council estates in a mini bus adorned with party propaganda.

Labour leader Ed Miliband plans to stop benefits for young people if he elected to Downing Street next year. While this will no doubt pander to Daily Mail reading, channel 5 watching middle England, but will do little to halt the radicalisation of young people who feel abandoned by politicians and journalists alike. They have no voice, no future, and no respect so what choices do they have? Meanwhile poverty will drive others into crime and further cuts to Police services, not to mention the dwindling respect the force enjoys these days after a sustained attack on them by politicians and news-papers, could see many inner city estates become no go zones.

Our flagship news station the beloved and trusted BBC is quickly becoming the most one sided, biased, censored version of the news available. It refuses to report any demonstrations such as the occupation in London this week end by disabled people. I am not saying I always agree with the methods of these protestors, but surely it is news worthy. Instead the BBC website is dominated by the World cup, which we are no longer involved in and Middle East conflict that we are not yet involved in.

My suggestion is that politicians ask real people what they think and that television producers put out real life documentaries that actually represent real life. It would also help if the press reported news instead of inventing it.

Instead of claiming their utterly rubbish programmes are lifting the lid on life on benefits, they should show random people from a cross section of society and allow its viewers to make an informed decision, rather than a right wing propaganda view.