This is what a real 'Benefits Street' might look like.
On Monday Channel 4 aired the first episode of a new programme called Benefits Street. The show is set on a street where 90 per cent of the people living there apparently claim some form of benefit.
Here is a short clip so you get the gist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr8jGiIp2MI
The clip is short but I’m sure you get the picture: the residents of ‘Benefits Street’ (actually James Turner Street in Birmingham) live as they do because they don’t have jobs. And they don’t have jobs because they can’t be bothered to get the, Or, so the programme seems to suggest.
That is, after all, what benefits are for isn’t it, the unemployed?
The point the producers of Benefits Street appear to have missed, however, is that the vast majority of people on benefits are about as far removed from some of the characters featured in the programme as it is possible to be.
Not only in the sense that they are ordinary people rather than troublemakers, but in that they aren’t unemployed at all.
Were it a real Benefits Street, it might look something like this (click to zoom):
(HT: New Economics Foundation)
In other words, the vast majority of people ‘on benefits’ are elderly. Pensions make up a whopping 42.3 per cent of the welfare bill. It’s pensioners who predominate on Benefits Street, not drug-addled, foul mouthed yobs.
The next largest recipients of welfare are those who do work but who are on low incomes. George Osborne’s ‘strivers’, in other words, who make up 20.8 per cent of the welfare budget through things like working tax credits.
The working poor are an increasingly common feature of 21st century Britain. In December the Joseph Rowntree Foundation revealed that over half of the 13 million people living in poverty are actually from working families.
Next up are the sick and disabled, who constitute 15.5 per cent of the welfare budget. They do sometimes take drugs; but it’s usually for pain relief, rather than to get high.
At the end of the street we finally reach the unemployed, who make up just 2.6 per cent of total welfare spending. Not 90 per cent, not even 10 per cent; but 2 per cent. That’s it. It isn’t so much a street as a potting shed in the garden of a small terraced house at the end of the row.
Looking again at my terrible photoshop mock up of a ‘Benefits Street’ it’s clear that, like the producers of the programme, I’ve created a woefully inaccurate representation of the true state of affairs. A real ‘Benefits Street’ would look a lot more like this:
Look at them. I hope it makes you as angry as it does me. Bloody scroungers.
52 Responses to “What a real ‘Benefits Street’ would look like”
2star2
Channel 4 is anti white British, it loves to portray them as being `lowlife` inferior miscreants. Watch it for a little while, it`ll soon be evident. We are all whores and alcoholics and work shy.
John Smith
Those on benefits, you would know all about that ..
George Carty
The government doesn’t care about pensioners, but it does care about their votes, and unfortunately the Daily Mail and the Daily Express have conned many pensioners into believing that house price inflation is wonderful.
Emsbabee
Not denying they exist, just tired that the media continue to focus on them when there are so many other sides to the story that need to be told.
remarx
Here we go again. Comfortable Tory voters who are too ready to fall for this blatant Tory propaganda vilifying the ‘lazy scumbag benefit claimants’. ‘
‘My taxes are paying for these lowlifes’, they shout, as though their contributions have any noticeable affect on the welfare bill. These people are the middle class ignorant, too comfortable and protective of their lifestyles to see past the end of their mortgages. Always ready to get on their soap boxes when it comes to benefit claimants. Of course there are the working class ignorant as well, who see the other classes as just ‘posh’ and ‘snobs’. They are both as bad as each other.
Perhaps I am generalising, but isn’t that the problem? It’s far too easy to see your own situation through blinkers that won’t allow sight of what’s really going on around you – it’s far more comfortable that way – less thought needed. Get moral for support from your social equals and all shout ‘yeah, that’s right!
But it is not ‘right’, not right at all. Check this link out to see the actual figures and think on.
https://www.leftfootforward.org/2014/01/what-a-real-benefits-street-would-look-like/
I too was appalled by what I deemed to be blatant anti benefit propaganda, so I contacted CH4 with my concerns. This is their reply:
“Thank you for your email regarding the recent programme, Benefits Street.
This is an observational documentary series following the lives of those living in a particular area of Birmingham, where the majority of households receive benefits. The premise of the series is to offer an insight into their lives. We believe the films show how people in diminished circumstances cope with the current climate of austerity and cuts in benefits and how the residents? community spirit comes to the fore in times of need.
We believe the programme and series is a fair and balanced portrayal of life on James Turner St for those contributors featured. The series is not, was never intended to be and indeed could not be a general representation of the vast numbers of people in the UK who, for whatever reason, find themselves, for all sorts of reasons, having to rely on benefits.
We appreciate you taking the time to write to us with your comments which have been logged for the information of those responsible for the programme.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate all feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise.
Regards,
Alex Chase
Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries”
So get rid of the blinkers and think.