The BBC

im currently petitioning to morally adopt a family of four in rotheram who will be required to prove that every morsel of gruel purchased with the excise tax extorted from my burgundy is used in an efficient and equitable fashion

xxp and the very first comment on that article is from some odious Daily Mail reading fuckhead

It's almost as if the government was deliberately setting the unemployed and those on low incomes against each other as a way of distracting attention away from Tory right wing cuntishness and greed driven capitalism OH WAIT

Claimant with brand-name trainers and Apple hardware revealed to be recent university graduate who bought all these things while working. Programme seems to be suggesting that the second you apply for JSA, you should hand back all these things to some central Office of Hairshirts so as not to annoy or confuse some numpty in George for ASDA.

maybe we actually have to watch it first?

i don't need to experience a kick in the balls to know it will make me feel sick

maybe we actually have to watch it first?

lol yeah maybe we've got it all wrong u guys

More info:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2013/29/nick-and-margaret-we-pay-your-benefits.html

Will the taxpayers feel that benefits are too high or not enough?

Who cares?

And will the claimants decide that hard work is good for them or will the sacrifice be too much?

Yeah, all claimants must be unemployed by choice.

and get a taste of the reality of working life.

And no claimant has ever worked before.

With the battle lines drawn between claimants and taxpayers

OH WORD?

And anyone who self-describes as a 'hard working taxpayer' should be drowned in a peat bog imo

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/corporate/images/width/live/p0/1b/z9/p01bz98p.jpg/608

Even their faces seem hateful / contemptuous.

can imagine the photographer saying 'That's fine, but could you look a little bit more like pompous sneering cunts? cheers'

Outraged that those two snivelling shitbags are getting a slice of my licence fee tbh.

i like them normally tbh it's just once you sign up for hate propaganda like this you're out of my good books forever :(

this othering of benefits claimants is unbelievable btw, the language the show uses is making "people who claim benefits" a separate social class, ignoring the number on working family tax credit or any of the other state benefits that don't go to the unemployed.

just hope pensioners, preschool children and people receiving hospital treatment realize they'll be next.

^^^brb reposting this to 'trenchant social commentary'

emphatically otm, of course :)

i just keep reaching a point where i want the whole welfare state dismantled just so i don't have to listen to idiots and libertarians whining any more

perhaps out of the ashes of total social catastrophe will come a new dawn, led by the people for each other

point at the ashes of civilization in 10 years time as gated communities with private militias fight off the rampaging feral hordes and say "YEAH IS THAT BETTER YOU LIKE THAT HUH????"

perhaps will come riots, poverty and ruin

lol @ our interleaving

perhaps out of the ashes of total social catastrophe will come a new dawn, led by the people for each other

Yeah, because that always works...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Hitler_1914_1918.jpg/170px-Hitler_1914_1918.jpg

Hey, he's a little guy who had a dream. Keep on reaching for that rainbow.

Pity Hitler didn't reach for this kind of rainbow...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/Rainbow_flag_and_blue_skies.jpg/240px-Rainbow_flag_and_blue_skies.jpg

perhaps, broadly, this isn't a crisis. just the usual showboating language designed to score points in the navel-gazing world of parliamentary politics. a few votes won and lost and a few soundbites, the welfare state never to be dismantled but chipped away at here and there, gradually replaced with quasi-private institutions that do the job roughly as efficiently as the state. the public bitching and whining and mean-spiritedness just the default attitude for a section of the public, and a bunch of radio/tv/internet outlets designed to cater to that attitude in the name of feeling communal and being entertained. the marginalized never pushed far out enough to feel truly resentful or recognize an injustice. no end times. a bunch of us angsty liberals fretting about how beastly people can be then turning the TV off and slapping ourselves on the back.

^ <high five>

it feels worse though, though, though that may be a question of perception. like thatcher's spawn coming of age (or major's spawn, or even blair's).

The quasi-private institutions are never as effective as the public sector, and furthermore bounce all FoI requests because they're 'commercially sensitive'. I want accountability from the government of the day and from corporations much more than I want it from any individual victim of socio-economic conditions. Also, if a person's private insurance policy for whatever reason required some kind of forced labour component to collect, consumer rights programmes run by the BBC would be down their throats in an instant.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nick-hewer-margaret-mountford-investigate-2043331#ixzz2YgeLtLln

maybe this show isn't as terrible as it seems?

although maybe not

Nick also takes a hard line with one father called Chris, suggesting he needs to buck up his ideas and make a few more sacrifices.

“One chap wouldn’t work away during the week and return at weekends because, being a modern father, he said, ‘I want to see my children’.

"Fathers are busy changing nappies now, which is something I never did. In my day, quite a lot of people worked away.

"I did it. I worked in London and the family were in the country.”

Really, if the BBC adore the free market so much they should arrange to be privatised, and live by its rules.

Coming soon on BBC1: Concentration Campwatch.

that wouldnt surprise me at all marcello

the only difference between the bbc and the khmer rouge is that the latter were at least nominally committed so some idea of solidarity -- the bbc are just rabid neoliberal wolves

ahahaha how am I the one who got trenchant social commentaried

gonna do the honours myself

...for fear of being struck by another's trenchant social commentary

snobes ✓

And so?

About as grotesque as you might expect. Old rich people who've never needed to claim touring the system, 'hardworking taxpayers' eg. single people on £16k a year judging people with children. Obviously, the made-redundant dad applying for 10 jobs a day is seen more favourably than the heavy-set woman with the same amount of kids and pets (apparently you shouldn't have pets or a telly if you're not working). Worst bit: dimwit rail-thin whinging woman who couldn't stop taking inventory of chubby woman's possessions and pets as if it proved anything, standing beside the chubby woman in the supermarket insisting she didn't buy a whole chicken because 'you should get the fillets' and who could not be persuaded to shut the fuck up about it. Chubby woman finally told the crew to stop filming; rail-thin woman got all smirky when her charge bought her a drink in the pub she visits one night a week - all over her skull of a face, that weird, greedy, snide expression you see in workplace/schoolyard bullies. I'd have bought a pint just so I could've chucked it over her. She actually asked the chubby mum if she could cut back her own food budget because her kids were getting free lunches at school and thus the undeserving bastards were getting an outrageous TWO hot meals a day. Petty bitch.

Guy on incapacity benefit who'd been through a 20-year wringer of unemployment, intermittent homelessness, relationship breakdown etc was managing to keep his two little girls on an even keel, described himself as a 'homemaker'. Twice, the mothers of his children abandoned them to him, giving him sole or main custody. He put every ounce of energy he had into running his home, but had trouble walking more than a hundred metres without having to rest. In between school runs he spent most of his time bargain-hunting for decent food (and was the best shopper/from-scratch cook of the claimants). He'd have about £6800 a year from his IB and child benefit to feed, clothe and keep the heat on for a family of three; the rest of his £15k/year benefit bill went straight to a landlord. It's disgusting.

Heads up: a taxpayer on £25k/year is only contributing about £60 of their tax bill towards other people's JSA, so these shitty little martinets who think they can shout the odds because they're hardworking serfs on £16k/year can basically STFU. Since they're paying tax on only £7k of that, JSA claimants are really only into them for about £40/year. Perspective, much?

i wish your review could get to a wider audience than just us, suzy - much appreciated

yep

Yes, it's a great review. I can't really blame people on low incomes for being angry that their quality of life is no better than standard the state regards as the bare minimum for survival. That anger needs to be directed in the right place though. The divide and rule approach to the less-well-off is horribly effective.

One thing I had hoped people would have learnt from the last recession was the fact that anyone can become unemployed. It has nothing to do with how hard you worked at your last job. I've been unemployed and I've been on 13 week schemes in rooms full of people from all kinds of backgrounds and experiences, people who thought they'd never be made unemployed, but they were. I would have thought that every adult in this country in the last ten years would either have been unemployed themselves at some time, or known someone who was, and consequently known that unemployed people are not lazy or workshy, and that the image of the 'benefit cheat' is by and large a myth. But it's a lesson that seems to be getting ignored in some kind of rush to be a judgemental right wing armchair shitbag.
And for the record, I've never met a single person who fits the media stereotype of the 'dole scrounger'. Everyone I've met who's been unemployed has wanted to work, wanted to get a job, wanted to get off JSA.

Idea for a follow-up programme: license fee payers question Mountford and Hewer about how much they were paid to appear on that 'documentary' and what they've spent the money on.

Can't add to or improve what Suzy said above. Snoball also OTM. Next on BBC1: two overpaid presenters try to justify why they should be paid public money for wagging their entitled fingers at people who are paid public money.

I would suspect that the BBC paid St**rt H*ll more money in six months than the single dad on incapacity benefit has received in a decade. Are we going to see a programme explaining the justification for that? (answer: nope)

idk ye all seem to be getting great value out of it tbh

Watching the BBC is SKIVING!

suzy that review definitely needs to be put up somewhere!

darragh your non sequitur arguments are so fucking basic, as are your ~arch~ ripostes

Can I just point out that this meretricious piece of shit has been running since 2009

idk ye all seem to be getting great value out of it tbh

^ WOUNDING ^