I touched on this Channel 4 program yesterday. Did you see it? Benefits Street? It made me very very angry as a working tax payer, but probably not for the reasons you think.
This pile of crap, which was meant to be a 'factual' T.V program, angered me because I was supposed to think that it represented a typical person on benefits. The people involved were told it was about community spirit. It was one sided and biased, made by idiots who wants us to believe the hype that all people on benefits are just like them. Let me tell you, they are not. Here are some figures widely available to all who care to Google them.
£1.6bn of the benefits budget is lost to fraud, while £16bn lies unclaimed by people who are entitled to claim it. 0.7% is lost to fraud of the TOTAL benefits bill
1.35 million people claim unemployment benefit, only 190 of those people have 10 kids or more.
Wealthy tax dodgers cost the exchequer £25bn a year
About 40% of the benefits bill is paid to OAP's who have paid into the system all their working lives.
Most benefits are paid to working low income families because the bosses are allowed to pay rock bottom wages
If we used the money saved by the bedroom tax, it would take a 1000 years (Yes a 1000 years) to pay back what the government lost selling off the Post Office cheaply to their chums.
Benefits Street caused outrage to people who really should know better. I sat and listened to LBC yesterday as all these 'outraged taxpayers' condemmed people on benefits, so think on this
In the 1930's Hitler convinced the German people that all their financial ails were the fault of the Jews and we all know how that turned out don't we? Remember, the media need to keep to a sensational agenda so their ratings go up or those poor priviliged producers/editors may just find themselves in the very place they try to trash.
2 comments:
I agree that the people shown on these programmes are in the minority, but what annoys me is that people like this can get benefits when genuine people are turned down. I know countless people, including family, who have found themselves in a situation where they genuinely need benefits for a short period and have been turned down for one reason or another. My guess is it's because genuine people don't know how to play the system and the people shown on these programmes do. :(
Ah just read your previous post Carol and it highlights exactly what I was trying to say. x
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