Poor Bastards

It's relentless, isn't it?  This seemingly endless stream of TV programmes telling us about those bloody benefit scroungers who are cheating us out of billions, I mean.  I saw yet another one being trailed the other day, this time on the BBC.  Channel Five have already shown a whole slew of this sort of programme.  To be fair, the BBC itself, a supposedly impartial public service broadcaster, has already run quite a few of these kinds of programmes already, with subtle titles like Saints and Scroungers.  Anyone watching these shows would come away with the impression that benefit fraud in the UK is rampant and that every claimant is some kind of evil criminal bastard.  The reality is that fraud actually accounts for only a tiny proportion of benefit loss in the UK - the overwhelming majority is down to administrative error.  But that isn't the narrative that our ruling elites want to spin.  They want us to believe that all benefit claimants, ie the poor and disadvantaged, are feckless layabouts for whom poverty is a lifestyle choice.

Why?  You might well ask.  Well, if you don't accept that they are idle gits stealing from hard working tax payers, then you have to accept that poverty isn't a choice, rather that those in poverty are, by and large, victims of our economic system.  Most specifically, that they are victims of a global economic downturn caused by the profligacy of the banks.  But obviously, that can't be true because the bankers are the Tories' best friends.  Not to mention paymasters.  But if we accept this counter narrative that the places responsibility for the downturn on the banks, then welfare benefits are clearly a necessity, to try and negate the impact on the poorest sections of society of the depression, rather than being an expensive luxury abused by cheats and criminals.  But sadly, all these TV programmes aren't interested in articulating such ideas, preferring instead to present nice, banker-friendly, black and white tales with clear cut heroes (government fraud investigators) and villains (the poor).