Saturday 11 January 2014

Benefits Street (Episode One)

Next Monday I shall be participating in a massive sponsored piss over the North of England (and any poor people I encounter on my way) to show my support for the inspirational Channel 4 documentary Benefits Street.

This groundbreaking television show finally confirmed my deepest suspicions that all Northerners emerge from the womb as work shy criminals.

Honestly the best thing Margaret Thatcher ever did was to finally take away the last of their silly little jobs in the 80's, thereby removing the ridiculous notion that Northerners are somehow hardworking folk. 

Well we’ve put paid to that idea haven’t we!

Now they haven’t got any jobs or industry and we’ve made sure everything is based in London we can see their true colours!

How brave the documentary was to not mention any of this as an underlying cause for long term mass unemployment in the North, instead turning its beady eye towards the oft overlooked angle of human laziness and focusing on the desperation that results from poverty before spinning this in a near total eclipsing negative light.

And how inspiring it was to watch nearly an hour of television that autistically failed to empathise with what the effects of long term unemployment actually are on a man, a family and a community. 

Yes, what the poor of this country really need is a good, hard, solid kick in the guts to firmly remind them of their place.

I suppose you have to feel sympathy for the producers of Channel 4. 

These are men and women who doubtless have to leave their apartments in London as early as 8am to get to the office, where they probably spend day after day hi-fiving each other about how cool their haircuts are or keeping up with the latest trends on Facebook, before coming back home and trying to decide whether to spend their 35k salary on prostitutes, cocaine or the latest I-pad.

No wonder they’re bitter at these Northern layabouts, with their social problems stemming from the ever increasing hopelessness that ingrained long term unemployment with no end in sight brings.  How these hard working media types must envy them as they get to swan around in parks drinking lager and smoking weed in the middle of the day!

I mean that’s the lifestyle we all crave isn’t it?  It must be bliss!

I live in London and it’s pretty much all fine here so I assume the rest of the country is fine too.

And if it really is so bad ‘ooop’ North, which I somehow doubt (though obviously I have never had call to drive further north than Watford) then there’s a simple answer here guys!

Move to London you lazy so and so’s!

I’m sure the government would help fund your relocation! 

No? 

Well then I’m sure you could always rely on Daddy for a £250,000 loan to buy a house.  I’m sure that £55 a week giro must have stacked up over the years right?

No? 

Well whatever.

Channel 4 could have made a much more interesting programme by examining their own attitude and then using Benefits Street to debate whether the entire infrastructure of capitalism isn’t starting to hit a bit of a wobble. 

Because the one thing Benefits Streets did do was to show that half of the country are out of work and giving up hope of ever seeing a wage packet again while the other half of the country are wondering why they’re even bothering to turn up for work when the rest of the country is living what they perceive to be a glamorous lifestyle. 

If you ask me, like the G'Gugvuntts and the Vl'hurgs, we should combine our forces.

Let’s just stop the job market, make everyone unemployed and then we can all enjoy the free and exotic lifestyle that receiving £55 a week brings.  Then everyone could experience the pleasure of drinking in a park all day to numb the deterioration in self confidence and self worth that being on benefits actually results in.

That way at least everyone might stop being such a dick to one another.

And Channel 4 might not feel the need to persistently exploit the weakest sectors of society in a bid to increase their own ratings.




#benefits street 
#channel 4 
#smashthestate

No comments:

Post a Comment