Blimey – just reading Radio Times (i’m old!) and Channel 5 next Tuesday night –
9pm: The Great Big Benefits Wedding Live
10pm: 12 Years Old and on Benefits
11pm: Benefits and Bypasses – Billion Pound Patients
12am: Undercover Benefits Cheat
That’s four straight hours of ‘benefits’ programming. I though that after the last election result ‘benefits’ had lost the war, so is there really any more mileage in this sort of thing?
Channel five have form for this I am afraid.
To me, its almost like bear baiting, lets all gawp at the chavs & feel superior.
Bastards.
‘a cheap holiday in other people’s misery’ as someone once said.
The Young Uns were at our club recently….fantastic!!
Ya know, Stevie, once you get past their crappest of the crap name, aren’t they? Saw them at Cambridge last year, feeling them a Coope, Boyes, Simpson/Watersons hybrid for our days.
I saw someone post a list of all the shows from recent years with benefits in the title, and it was absolutely massive. I was genuinely taken aback.
For me, it’s there to satisfy people’s need to feel better than someone. “At least I’ve got more money than them!” Kind of depressing really.
Until last year you could explain it partly by C5 being owned by that human drip-tray Richard Desmond, who benefits from his audience toeing the gov’t line because a Tory government won’t enact any press regulations. Labour under Miliband wanted to go a bit Leveson on they ass (although as of Sept I imagine Labour will be more focused on nationalising Tesco or something).
But now it’s owned by Viacom, so I suppose the depressing truth is that some people like to watch this shit.
Bob, the last thing I’d want, under any circumstances, is state control of the Press.
Nationalising Tesco? Corbyn would get my vote for that one.
Me either. I’d like some recourse for the likes of wossname Jeffries, though. I don’t think a properly independent body to investigate press abuses has to mean state control of what’s printed.
All those bloody over-65s on benefits. Bastards.
Been looking at some DWP figures.
Last year pensions took 46% of the DWP budget.
Compared to JSA which was 3% and Housing Benefit at 10.6%
What shocked me more was the cost of administrating all this: 6.3 bilion pounds.
This is the stat that dare not be mentioned.
It’s OK railing about all these benefit cheats, but a very small percentage of a small number is very small indeed, in the scheme of things. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tackle it further, but it’s a question of context.
The numbers may not be 100% accurate but I’m 99.9% sure they are relatively (to each other) accurate in this story I picked up from More or Less on R4.
Mr Farage was bleating on about the Scottish Independence vote and said that “52% of Scots are on benefits”, as if that was some terrible indictment of the Buckfast and whisky fuelled ne’er do wells that call a rude hut in Scotland home. Cue outrage from a few people, taking the Farage bait. “It’s a disgrace, let them be independent” etc.
More or Less look at the actual numbers, and how the 52% is calculated, and in particular what “on benefits” means in this case, for Farage’s number to make sense, and the comparable number for England is, on the same basis….
51%.
Outrageous.
Child benefit, child and working tax credits, housing benefit, pension, disability benefit and unemployment benefit – I can see 50% of us being on one or more of those.
I think – although I haven’t seen much of them – that these programmes are as much about disability claimants as JSA. At £37bn, disability is the second biggest benefit expenditure after pensions, and as you can’t do much about the number of old people, maybe that’s why this area is the one that’s targeted.
(I know someone’s going to say you shouldn’t have to cut welfare because the rich should pay their taxes, etc, etc, but let’s take that as read, shall we?)
Yes, I missed Disability Living allowance. My (DWP) figures have it at 7.9%.
The figures are a couple of years old but the percentages are probably still round that mark, even allowing for IDS’s depredations.
DLA, personal independence payments and incapacity benefits = £29.4bn of a total welfare budget of 214.3bn. (OBR, July 2015). About 14%. State pension is about 40%.
Can you provide a link to your figures? Cheers chiz old chap.
http://cdn.budgetresponsibility.independent.gov.uk/July-2015-EFO-234224.pdf
Hey Adman, over 67’s by the time you get there. Bastards.
I’m looking forward to the Channel Five series Pension Street. It’s about a leafy suburban avenue where no one’s worked in 20 years and everyone claims benefits and refuses to die at 75 like they’re supposed to.
My Dad, who is 86, was complaining about immigration and how crowded the country is the other day (conveniently ignoring the vast undeveloped areas such as the Scottish Highlands.) I pointed out out that this is what happens when life expectancy goes up.
Life expectancy over 65 has almost doubled in 50 years. That’s where all the money’s going. Anyone for a means-tested state pension?
I expect it will come. I do some work for a large insurance company and life expectancy is a major issue for them, for their own employee pension fund as well as their customer’s.
I suspect that these programmes were commissioned when Desmond was still in charge. The new owners will still have to show them to honour their contract.
Depressing stuff.
I rather think most of the problems are up the other end.
Not just next Tuesday either, there were two such programmes scheduled to go out last night!
What gets me is the jovial nature of the voiceovers on these programmes. Even the music. They’ll show someone heading to a foodbank and play jaunty music in the background.
I don’t know if its an urban myth or not but it’s said that Adam Faith’s last words were “Channel 5 is all shit, isn’t it? Christ, the crap they put on there. It’s a waste of space.”
Not a bad parting quote; can’t argue with it.