Emma Harrison and the media

Looking back on the story of A4e, I'm struck by the relationship over the years between its owner Emma Harrison and the media.  To say that she was the face of the company is a gross understatement.  She seemed to see the company as a reflection of herself.  Her picture was prominent in their offices rather as dictators demand huge portraits of themselves all over their countries; and as the company grew so did her sense that it was all about her.  Staff were "rewarded" by being invited to weekends camping in the grounds of Thornbridge Hall.  The select few got to have "tea with Emma".  Most of the employees saw this for what it was, but daren't say so out loud.  Yet the media were continually charmed by her.
I didn't see the Secret Millionaire programme she made - and I'm glad of that.  But whenever she was interviewed about her supposed area of expertise something strange happened.  Harrison appeared on the Daily Politics once and was taken apart by Andrew Neil.  Yet about a year later she appeared again, and got very soft treatment, as if Neil had forgotten the first interview entirely.  Then she appeared on the same programme as "guest of the day" and contributed absolutely nothing.  Channel 4's worthy Benefit Busters series featured two films made in A4e offices, and one of those at least should have set alarm bells ringing about what was happening in New Deal - but didn't.  In a brief interview after the second film Harrison bragged about her contacts in government.  It was then put to her that a big problem for the unemployed was that short-term work meant long delays in getting benefits again when the work stopped.  What should be done about that?  Her reply was memorable: "How should I know?"
On Radio 4's The Moral Maze it was Harrison herself who had to correct the presenter, who thought A4e was a charity.  And on the Today programme the interviewer, Justin Webb, seemed mesmerised by her, asking no relevant questions and letting her talk rubbish.  A high point (or low, depending on your point of view) came with her starring role in Famous Rich and Jobless, a horribly exploitative series of poverty porn.  (Even today the BBC's website page for the programme describes A4e as "the largest employment agency in the world, responsible for getting thousands of people back to work".)  Harrison was supposed to be an expert, helping and guiding.  One unemployed man was recommended to go to a specialist agency.  Problem solved?  No.  After the series was shown he was still out of work and very bitter towards Harrison, who had promised help.  She couldn't do anything, she said, because A4e didn't operate in his area.  In another series on another channel Harrison was pitted against another expert to find a job for someone who was "hard to help".  She solved it neatly - by calling in a favour from a friend to give the lad a trial at a job.  And she won.
Harrison had become a celebrity, employing a celeb agency to get her work, and she popped up regularly on such diverse shows as Eggheads (I missed that) and Masterchef (as a guest at a dinner to sample the contestants' efforts).
It must have been hard when all that stopped so abruptly.  Perhaps that's why she agreed to the interview on Channel 4 News, long after her fall from grace, when the A4e WP results were leaked.  Surely the media would be kind to her again?  But that was in the past, and it was a disaster.
The media can build you up, but they can also bring you down.

£1.375m for Emma

It's a story in today's Observer, but it's an irritating one.
The figures come from her husband, who said she got a total dividend of £1.25m in the year from April 2011, plus £250,000 from January this year.  Okay, she didn't step down as Chair of A4e until March, so this is hardly a surprise.  Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, is outraged, justifiably.  But the paper seems to forget that a big slice of A4's income doesn't come from welfare-to-work.  There are plenty of other lucrative contracts.
And there's a worrying inaccuracy in the story.  "She became a high-profile figure through reality TV programmes such as The Fairy Jobmother."  Er ... no.  She wasn't in that.  It was Hayley Taylor, who got her big break as an A4e employee in Benefit Busters.
I've no objection, of course, to the Observer / Guardian keeping this in the public eye.  But let's get it right.

Why pick on A4e?

I was drawn into a very peculiar correspondence recently.  I'll spare you the details, but it was with someone who professed himself unable to understand why A4e was the target for special hostility.  It's no different from any of the other companies, he said, so why was there such a virulent internet campaign against it.  I tried, briefly, to explain, but he dismissed what I said and still wouldn't have it.
Perhaps you can help me out here.  I'll set out what I think, and you can agree or not.  Why A4e?

1. When the wave of privatisation in employment-related areas got under way in the mid-2000s there was one big winner - A4e.   It got a huge slice of New Deal, plus Train to Gain and Business Link and more.  It's rivals couldn't understand why.  Even when questions were asked in Parliament, nothing stuck.  There was talk of friends in high places.
2. A4e's reputation among its clients was poor.  Was it any worse than that of other companies?  My impression is that it was.  The 2006-2009 New Deal contracts were very badly designed, fuelling client resentment, but experiences with A4e sparked off more internet outrage than could be chance.
3. The media did try to examine what was going on.  A Radio 5 Live programme was excellent, but nobody took any notice.  Channel 4's Benefit Busters should have rung alarm bells; but the only lasting effect of the two episodes featuring A4e was that a woman who had been a tutor with the company was catapulted to fame and fortune as the Fairy Jobmother, suddenly an international careers expert on such slender experience.  The unemployed began to feel even more insulted.  Other producers, who wanted to make the whistle-blower type of programme, found themselves thwarted by the fact that nothing was provable and the threat of legal action could always scare people off.
4. The face (and voice and everything else) of A4e was its majority shareholder, Emma Harrison.  The cult of personality was unstoppable, and she became a media celebrity.  When it came to demonstrating her expertise in finding jobs for people, however, she was less than impressive.  When the BBC plumbed the depths of the genre with Famous, Rich and Jobless, Harrison walked away from the show leaving at least one unemployed man she had supposedly helped feeling used and abandoned.  Another programme (the title of which I forget because I couldn't bring myself to watch it) saw Harrison competing with someone else to get an apparently hopeless case into a job.  That she achieved this by ringing up one of her mates was another kick in the teeth for those desperate for work.
5. More quietly, A4e was empire-building, getting into all areas of people's lives in some places; CLACs, which took advice services away from the CAB and the voluntary sector in some places; direct payments for social care; prison education; a privatised version of Pupil Referral Units.  They were in schools.  They were in more and more countries, with the aid of the British government.  And they came very close to owning and running a bank, having come to an arrangement with a South African bank and secured a £1m grant from a quango here.  That, happily, came to nothing.  But the sense of boundless ambition was very disquieting.
6. When David Blunkett, who had been the Secretary of State on whose watch A4e had prospered, ceased to be a minister, he took a job with A4e.  Later, when Blunkett had ceased to be such an asset, a Conservative insider joined the payroll.  Of course, A4e is hardly unique in employing those who can oil the political wheels.  But it did seem especially blatant.
7. Targets were never met.  Okay, A4e performed averagely; other contractors were usually just as poor.  But failure to perform adequately was never a reason for not giving them the next contract.  One can blame the procurement process for that.  But it added to the sense that the reality never matched the hype.
8. And hype there certainly was, a constant stream of it.  And it intensified when Flexible New Deal forced providers into competing in each area.  A4e's unfortunately named Know Hope roadshow was a PR campaign to persuade unemployed people that the company was going to change their lives.  (Fortunately for all the providers, the competition element was postponed and the contracts were bought out by the coalition government.)  None of the other companies behaved in this way.  They didn't want publicity, apart from the odd good news piece in the local press.  For A4e, publicity was essential. 
9. While all this was going on, there were reports of fraudulent activity, acknowledged but never publicised by the DWP.  While this was fairly minor stuff, it brought out more criticism of the company.  And it should have highlighted a major cause of such activity; the intense pressure on staff to make the money, whatever it took.  Bonuses or commission for getting job outcomes; prizes for success; it all encouraged corner-cutting if not downright fraud.
10. Harrison boasted of her closeness to government.  While she probably made little impression on Blair, and none at all on Brown, she was able to persuade Cameron that she had the answer to all society's ills.  She was the solution to whatever had caused the 2011 riots.  She would rescue the horde of problem families and put them back to work.  It was hubris.  While other companies made millions for their shareholders and paid their executives very well, it was Emma Harrison's 85% share of an £11m dividend which brought A4e's huge profits into the spotlight.

Why pick on A4e?

Watch it if you must

A new series of The Fairy Jobmother begins on Channel 4 on Tuesday 7 June. I won't be watching. I wouldn't waste a minute of my life on it. If you do, dear reader, do post your thoughts.

It's worth remembering how this particular piece of what's been termed "poverty porn" came about. Channel 4 screened Benefit Busters, three programmes which took a serious look at the issues surrounding the welfare-to-work industry. The first two were filmed in A4e offices. Who now remembers the scenes in Hull, of clients being insulted and given nothing useful to do, of the man who got a job only to have it come to an end after a week? No, it was the first programme, which saw Hayley Taylor haranguing single mothers in Doncaster, which impressed producers. Ms Taylor was a character. And so she became a star, leaving A4e for a whole new career, here and in the US.

So will she fix up more hopeless cases with jobs which they certainly wouldn't have got if the cameras weren't there? Will you be shown idle, feckless people as if they were typical of the unemployed? Probably.

The BBC Panorama programme tonight (Monday 6 June) ought to be more informative: "With the government promising a welfare revolution, getting people off benefits and into work, Panorama visits the seaside resort of Rhyl in North Wales. In some parts of the town, nearly half of the adult population are on benefits. The programme follows the real life stories of some of the unemployed there, and asks the government whether this battle can really be won." But will there be any mention of the New Deal and FND providers who have dealt with these people in the past? Probably not.

More publicity

Do you remember "Benefit Busters"? It was screened a year ago, but many of us recall at least the first two episodes, filmed in A4e offices. Now read Emma Harrison's account of how it was made, in an article she chose to post yesterday. Is this an attempt to expunge the memory of that second episode in Hull, where groups of clients were filmed doing useless, time-filling exercises; where one staff member spoke incredibly rudely to a client? Perhaps that was "gritty". Has she forgotten the interview where she was asked about the problem of benefits loss when people take casual jobs? She laughed, you remember, and said, "How should I know?" before promising to take it up with her friends in government. We all have embarrassing memories, but we don't publicise them a year on. "Benefit Busters" exposed what taxpayers' money was actually paying for with New Deal, but Harrison seems to believe that it was a triumph for her and for A4e.

But all publicity is good, and that seems to be the theory behind an otherwise pointless interview in the Guardian last week. The writer, Jane Dudman, asks, "Why does she think she attracts such attention? 'I'm a girl,' she says, self-deprecatingly." Hmm. There is more on the Harrison legend of her start in the business, and then: "She is clear that A4e is not a social enterprise. 'It's a social purpose company,' she says, firmly. And despite the fact that she now employs more than 3,000 people, Harrison says she is still very entrepreneurial. 'I love creative leadership,' she says. 'And what's different now is that I don't have to worry about whether the photocopier's working.' " Dudman doesn't choose to probe the extent of the profits, but she ends the piece with: "Harrison's company is already the largest private contractor for welfare to work services, but she's keen to take on more. She takes a fierce line on job searching, saying job opportunities do exist, even in the midst of the worst recession since the 1940s. 'That upsets me the most. It gives people a reason to give up. A4e is famous for finding the hidden jobs. I promise you they're out there.' As public spending cuts begin to bite seriously, Harrison's theory stands to come under severe test. Many of those presently employed in the sector will certainly be hoping she is right." Yes, Jane, and many of the unemployed will be wondering where those "hidden jobs" are.

TV - and being ill

With odd timing, A4e has published accounts of TV programmes "Benefit Busters" and "Famous, Rich and Jobless" on their MyA4e site. These are clearly dated July 2010 but read as if they are recent or haven't yet happened. Perhaps they are meant as a reminder that "The Fairy Jobmother" is just a spin-off. After all, the Doncaster Free Press managed to review that programme, calling Ms Taylor a "job expert", with but a single mention of "training company A4e". However, for all the hype, Jobmother only managed to get 8.9% of the viewers on Tuesday (according to MediaWeek), compared with 20.7% for BBC1's mini-series "The Silence" and 11.2% for ITV's "The Bill". It will be interesting to see how the second episode fares.

Reminding us that A4e has many irons in the fire, their Pathways site tells us that "A4e pathways are at the forefront with support for employers and GPs with the introduction of the fit note. A4e Pontypool pathways have contacted every GP surgery in Torfaen and Monmouthshire offering their expertise in reducing long term sickness related absence from work. The response from GP surgeries has been good and a number of meetings to discuss how the A4e pathways team could have a key role in supporting people where the doctor recommends an early return to work is work in progress." There is information about these new "fit notes", which were introduced in April, on the NHS website. So you could find yourself being referred to A4e just for being ill.

Unemployment as entertainment

I've decided that I'm not going to watch "The Fairy Jobmother". I am sick of televison companies treating the unemployed as entertainment.

"Benefit Busters" was a gallant attempt to raise some important issues. We saw lone parents being "persuaded" into what have become known as poundland jobs, a synonym for the worst kind of mimimum wage work. We saw disturbing scenes at an A4e office, and what happens to people on IB who are being "assessed". But there was no further interest from the media in any of these issues. The only outcome was that a controversial individual in the first programme got a contract, because her methods make good television, supposedly. BBC's "Famous, Rich and Jobless" was a disgraceful mix of celebs and distress which proposed no solutions. The Panorama programme gave Digby Jones a platform to spout ill-informed nonsense and obscure the real issues facing the young, unemployed men. Now we are to be treated to another series which seems set to paint unemployed people as lacking in motivation, confidence and "life skills".

I have nothing against Hayley Taylor personally. The interview with her on the Channel 4 website shows that she came into the work in the same way as did many other people working on New Deal. She got lucky. But I don't feel obliged to watch any more of this.

The Fairy Jobmother - previews

I saw a trailer for this programme tonight, and my heart sank.

The various TV listings magazines offer different opinions; the Radio Times says:

"Last year Benefit Busters offered an eye-opening look at Britain's unemployed and those who steer them back into work. The surprise star was formidable employment coach Hayley Taylor, who combined ruthless positivity with a whimsical line in neckerchiefs. Now she has her own show. Hayley descends from the TV heavens to sprinkle fairy dust on the little people. First in line is a jobless couple in Middlesborough with a debt problem. Hayley teaches them basic life skills, like how to shake hands, but what could feel condescending doesn't, thanks to the emotional warmth. She really cares."

If that isn't enough to put you off, the trailer is. The three episodes clearly deal with the sort of unemployed people who need those "basic life skills", thus insulting the hundreds of thousands who have skills, qualifications and experience which would leave Ms Taylor standing, and are desperate for work but who simply can't find it. I hope I'm wrong; but it seems set to reinforce the hugely dangerous stereotype of the dole scroungers and the dependency culture. And I have one question which I hope the programmes will answer: what are Ms Taylor's qualifications for this work, particularly for debt counselling? It may well be that she has the appropriate qualifications, but I'd like to be sure.

(It does seem that the programme Emma Harrison made for the channel has been shelved. What a shame!)

What next?

It's been an interesting week for A4e on the PR front. And it has illustrated the way in which the attention of the media (TV, radio and the newspapers) comes and goes, and rarely joins up into a serious examination of issues. A couple of years ago Emma Harrison was getting a hard time on the BBC's The Daily Politics as the welfare-to-work model was under fire. This week she was being treated with something approaching reverence on the same channel on Working Lunch. There was a weekend of interest when a newspaper published details of fraud, and an item on Channel 4 News followed. But that was quickly over. Some months back we had Benefit Busters on Channel 4, which really did raise the important questions. But that can only be done once. TV needs visuals, and it needs to have a story. So this week the BBC fell back on the tired "celebrity tourism" thing, and left all the important issues unexamined. Radio does it better. The Radio 5 Live programme was excellent - but it has a very small audience. Now BBC Radio 4 is planning a File on Four programme on New Deal. This is usually an intelligent and thoughtful programme, not easily scared off by commercial interests. It will probably not be gunning for any particular provider, and will strive to be fair and balanced. When will anyone, particularly politicians, join up the dots and begin to see the real picture?

Pre-publicity

The pre-publicity for this wretched programme makes watching it almost redundant. We've seen the curious and inaccurate ways in which A4e and Emma Harrison have been described, such as "the government's back-to-work tsar", and there is another instance today in the Manchester Evening News.

"Guiding them are Emma Harrison, founder of the largest employment agency in the world" No, chaps, it's not an employment agency. It goes on: Emma says a new approach - like the government’s Flexible New Deal scheme she helps administer - was needed to help the long term jobless. “There may be issues of depression, illiteracy or drug addiction which our staff help people to address. There’s no ‘one size fits all’. Every person is different. “We hope these programmes will highlight the enormous problems faced by everyone seeking re-employment.” That's the line which she took in yesterday's Working Lunch programme.

The Mirror is more accurate, writing of "Emma Harrison whose company A4e (as seen on C4's Benefit Busters) helps get the jobless back into work."

For anyone who is interested in unemployment rather than celebrities, there is another programme, "Jobless" on BBC1 at 10.35 tonight.

Payment by results

Some people watching Benefit Busters episode 2 may have been surprised by the way in which some of A4e's employees are paid for achieving job outcomes. I was even more surprised that the Shaw Trust do the same thing. The justification rests on the idea that a job - any job - is what it's all about, so put the pressure on staff to get them with financial incentives. But there are providers which don't have that system; and while I can't quote figures, I'm sure that their results are no worse than A4e's, and may well be better. The danger with payment by results, of course, were clearly seen in what happened in Hull, when casual agency jobs were claimed as permanent. Not only was the pressure there on the company to get the percentages up; it was on the individual to earn his bonus. And in all that, it's the client who gets forgotten.

Which political party is going to have the gumption to say that this whole business is a colossal waste of money? That all the cash which is going in private profit should be put into real skills training via colleges and specialist training companies? Perhaps when young people who think they have been guaranteed a job or training discover that it's not quite what they had in mind.

It's back

Benefit Busters episode 2 is back on 4 on demand. If you didn't see it first time around, now's your chance.

Still no Episode 2

The official line was that someone who was filmed in episode 2 of Benefit Busters objected to being identifiable, so the programme has been removed pending pixellation (or whatever you call it). That spawned all sorts of rumours - I had a couple of comments claiming that, according to a particular forum, a particular person was identified. I checked and could find no confirmation of that so I didn't spread that rumour. But how long does it take to re-edit the film? Channel 4 have removed all comments on the episode, as well as the two clips that were on the webpage for a long time, and there is still no indication of when, if ever, it will be available.

The Curious Case of the Missing Episode

This is getting silly. The reaction to episode 2 of Benefit Busters was overwhelmingly negative - critical of A4e and the government more than of the jobless. But those who didn't see it and were banking on watching it online are frustrated. Channel 4 won't explain; nor will those newspapers which have denied their readers the opportunity to comment. There's just silence. Which leads people to the conclusion that A4e exercised their rights over the programme to ensure that no one else can see it - damage limitation. And that they also put pressure on other branches of the media to close down discussion. In a way I don't blame them. The prospect of clips from the programme being repeatedly shown is unbearable if they can stop it.

But someone - Channel 4, A4e or the DWP - should have the courage to tell us why.

And the Shaw Trust people must be quaking in their boots about this Thursday's episode.

The Rumour Mill

If you missed the first episode of Benefit Busters you can watch it via Channel 4's website. If you missed the second episode - tough. It was, apparently, briefly available but has now been withdrawn. This has, of course, fuelled suspicions in some quarters that A4e has insisted on it being pulled. Or was it the DWP? Or possibly someone who was filmed for the programme and who now objects to how he / she was portrayed? Channel 4 are not saying. And the Daily Express is not allowing comments on the brief piece about the programme on is website.

The rumour mill keeps grinding away on the idea that the FND contracts could be cancelled, or at least that one prime contractor could find itself without a contract. It seems that the contracts have not yet been signed, perhaps because negotiations are still going on. But the contracts have been awarded. And a crucial part of FND is that clients have a choice of providers. This means that in all areas contractors and subcontractors have been spending money on setting up facilities and staff. In Hull, for instance, Working Links have had to rent space for the first time. If the contracts were pulled at this stage, would they not be entitled to compensation for this expenditure? Perhaps that's another reason for the Conservatives' reluctance to spell out what they would do. This element of choice in FND also raises the question of what happens when clients all insist on avoiding a particular provider. Benefit Busters has stirred up a hornets' nest, and the DWP should get its act together and respond.

Carry on caring

There's been no reaction from the press to episode 2 of Benefit Busters. They reviewed episode 1, so that's it, move on to something else. A number of bloggers have reacted, but as far as the mainstream media are concerned it's old hat. I do wonder what the atmosphere was like in A4e offices around the country on Friday morning!

But how are A4e taking it? Well, in Redcar the Gazette was happy to report that "Thornaby-based A4e held a fun day on Redcar seafront this week to publicise the support it offers people seeking employment and training opportunities." (Note that A4e is always portrayed in these pieces as a local company.) "And while the kids were having fun, A4e staff were on hand in the roadshow vehicle to give grown-ups advice about jobs, vocational training, literacy, numeracy, motivation, confidence building, life coaching and goal setting." Bet that was fun. And the emphasis these days is on "helping" entire families; it's not clear what plans lie behind the phrase. The spokeswoman got the slogan in, though: “Our mission is to improve people’s lives and that’s what we’re doing today.” Beware of the beach this Bank Holiday; you could run into an A4e fun day.

The legacy of Benefit Busters

Inevitably there was a great deal missing from last night's Benefit Busters programme.

We were told that A4e was contracted to occupy the clients for 30 hours per week. We were not told that this is meant to include a work placement. The original idea behind the contracts was that claimants would get experience of working and, possibly, be taken on by the employer permanently. Lots of A4e's clients are indeed out on placements, but few with private sector employers, who don't want the hassle. Most are hived off to the voluntary sector, and A4e pays the organisations small amounts to take them.

The pressures on space and the difficulty in usefully occupying clients results in people being sent out to roam the streets. Two former A4e clients in Hull complained to the local BBC office that they had been sent out to do quizzes, and that the whole "course" had been a waste of time.

Mark's job was intended to be permanent and so would have resulted in a job outcome payment for A4e. However, since he didn't stay in the job for 13 weeks, they would not have received the "rolled up weeks", the payments for the remaining weeks of the programme.

A4e were caught claiming agency jobs as permanent in Hull. We saw how these jobs are casual and so very unpopular with claimants; they also don't qualify as real jobs with the DWP, so the temptation to get the agency to tick the "permanent" box is very real.

A few months after this programme was filmed, an Ofsted inspection rated A4e's offices in the area only "satisfactory" and gave the figure for job outcomes as 18%.

A4e's PR people will know that this programme, together with last week's episode, are a disaster for the image of the company and its boss. But does it matter in the long run? The Conservatives are still reluctant to say that they would ditch FND, because it depends on the state of the contracts when they get into government. And for A4e the future lies abroad more than in Britain.

Benefit Busters, episode 2

Before the A4e-bashing starts, let's get something clear. What we saw tonight was the creation of the government. Gordon Brown's New Deal was transformed into this ridiculous 13-week "course" with the aim, supposedly, of encouraging the private sector to get the results they were being paid for. So blame, first of all, the government.

And something else needs to be said. The programme gave the impression that poor benighted Hull was dependent on A4e for getting its high unemployment rate down. It isn't. A4e has a subcontractor in the city, the local FE college, which has as many clients as A4e. (The figure of 700 clients was quoted - I think that means the total for A4e itself and the college.) And there are a number of local initiatives, not least by the local council.

Having said that, I'm amazed that A4e agreed to this. The clients shown were not representative. Where were the men and women with a good work record and qualifications? But those who were picked out did enable the point to be made. These contracts are a waste of time and money. People sat around doing nothing; as Mark said, "The idea is to bore you into getting work." Mark got a job and was thrilled - but a few weeks later he was made redundant. That meant he was angrier than ever. Sherrelle, a brave young woman, got a job which lasted 4 weeks. Natalie, a recruiter from the (Primetime?) agency tried, largely without success, to get people to go for agency work at Greencore, a large local cake factory. But the clients knew that this was casual work and avoided it. Dane, a young man who could be seen as a stereotypical layabout, went for the induction, having been assured that the work was full time, but turned it down when he realised it was temporary with no guaranteed hours. Not enough explanation was given for this problem; but we learned that when Mark lost his job it took 3 weeks to get his benefits reinstated.

And all this was put to Emma Harrison. Did she cringe when she saw it? The narrator put it to her that, with the signing of the lucrative new contracts (FND), is recession good for business? She conceded that because there were more people they were more difficult to help. Then we got the PR phrases. The ultimate aim is to transform people's lives. A4e is different because they come at it from a different angle. It's "gutting" to let an individual down. After we saw Mark having to sign on again and Dane refusing casual work, Emma is asked about A4e's pushing people towards temporary jobs or zero-hour contracts. She says that it undermines people's confidence, and will talk about it more at government level (!) There is an uncomfortable silence. When the narrator asks again, she laughs and says she isn't a genius and has no answer, but will think about it.

I don't think this was the programme A4e had in mind.

Let's not get hysterical

With the second episode of Benefit Busters not even aired yet, there are a lot of opinions out there. The One Show on BBC1 linked it with the programme about the Duchess of York's visit to a Manchester estate, and did a piece about how the "working class" is now being portrayed negatively. Lots of figures are being bandied about, and today we're told that the number of people of working age who live in homes where no one has a job has gone up by half a million in the past year. The Conservatives have siezed on this, calling the figures "scandalous". But there's an interesting blog comment by the BBC's Nick Robinson which gives a more measured interpretation. It's obvious from BB episode 1 and the clips from episode 2 that the phrase which the producers want us to commit to memory is, "The unemployed get too much money", so that we will then go on to substitute "workshy" for "unemployed" and condemn the lot. What's also worrying is that this sort of manipulation pitches one lot of unemployed people against another lot. I'm genuinely unemployed, they say, really looking for work, unlike that lot who are workshy scroungers. Guess who the winners will be in that contest.

BB2 - Preview clips

There are two clips from tomorrow's Benefit Busters programme on the Channel 4 website - and they're worrying. In the first we're given misleading information about the way that providers are paid, but we'll leave that. We're shown how clients are divided into groups, with the "job-ready" being given the most attention as far as finding work is concerned. This is understandable; but I wonder if young Lee - who admits that the drive is to get people into jobs and never mind the rest, because otherwise his own job will be at stake - still works for A4e. In the second clip we hear Mark making the point that was highlighted in the first programme - you can get more on benefits than by working.

Is there really a huge poster of Emma Harrison on the wall at A4e offices?