More hate-mongering

I don't know whether Iain Duncan Smith and Richard Desmond have ever met, but they certainly work to help each other.  Desmond is the owner of Channel 5 and the Daily Express, and he uses both to demonise the poor.  After Channel 4 had screened the infamous Benefits Street, it was Channel 5 which hosted the "debate" on the subject.  Now, Desmond's channel is making a series of its own.  No title has been decided, they say (but the makers of Benefits Street said the same, and they lied) but it's about the benefits "culture", and they are in the process of filming.
We can see how they go about it through the protests of one of the cities unwillingly involved.  Hull has a lot to be encouraged about at the moment, in the midst of one of the worst unemployment rates in the country.  But now the film-makers have been leafletting the poorer estates seeking gullible people to take part, and have already done some filming.  Local councillors are furious, but seem helpless to prevent it.
Of course people should have the freedom to take part, if they are given accurate information and understand what they're doing.  But what about the people who live in the area and have not consented to this?  Benefits Street led to children who live in James Turner St being bullied.  Other residents felt that they had been stigmatised simply for their address.  Many of those who did take part believed that they were misled by the film-makers.  If there's a redress in law, none of them can afford to sue.
I have a suggestion.  Send Katie Hopkins to live on one of these estates for a while.  I'd watch that.

UJM and slumming

I was composing a reflective piece on the last six years; but two news stories yesterday are more important.

First, of course, there's Universal Job Match.  It's not news to us, or to thousands of people, but because Frank Field MP has spoken out the media are taking notice.  There are articles in the Guardian, the Independent, the Mirror and the Huffington Post  which tell the story.  Channel 4 News are running a story on it, and I think the Radio 2 Jeremy Vine programme has already done a feature.  So, mercifully, this scandal is now out there, and there has to be action.  What the DWP should do (but won't, obviously) is to take the site down immediately.  They can't tinker with it because it's owned and run by a private company, so Monster should be sued for breach of contract.  If it's possible, revert to the old direct.gov site which compiled vacancies from all the jobcentres.  It worked.  If not possible, then chuck out the idea of a single site altogether.  Jobseekers should be immediately freed from the obligation to use UJM.

The second bit of news is horribly depressing.  The BBC have commissioned another entertainment series from the people who brought you Benefits Street, to be called Famous, Rich and Hungry.  Yes, we all have fond memories of a previous effort, Famous, Rich and Jobless, which gave A4e's Emma Harrison the chance to swan about looking as if she knew what she was doing.  For an opinion on the latest offering I can't do better than Tanya Gold in the Guardian.  

Just as the government has reverted to Victorian attitudes towards the poor, so have the rich reverted to a very Victorian practice - slumming.  It got going in the 1880s, particularly in the East End of London.  It was a form of tourism, with the wealthy going amongst the slums seeking excitement and illicit thrills.  Some went out of genuinely altruistic motives, to do good works, but for many it was just a fun night out.  So it is with the media today.  Such a pity that the BBC thinks that this sort of "entertainment" is appropriate.

Before these two stories broke, Frances Ryan wrote an excellent piece in the New Statesman.  The case she makes is strengthened today.

Fear and loathing

Many people have asked how it can be that Iain Duncan Smith keeps his job.  Perhaps the answer lies here, in a survey of how Tory party members rate the cabinet.  As you see, IDS is top.  Overwhelmingly, Tories approve of Smith and what he is doing.  So he can mess up one project after another and it doesn't matter.  He can be astonishingly rude to the select committee (to which only Labour members bothered to turn up) and it doesn't matter.  The right-wing love him, because he's engaging with the enemy, poor people, and trouncing them.
But why does the right hate the poor so much?  I've come to the conclusion that what lies behind it is fear.  Consider the case of Jack Monroe.  On paper she ticks all the boxes to attract the contempt of the comfortable.  She's young, didn't do all that well at school, became a single mother, is a lesbian and was unemployed.  How's that for a stereotype?  But Jack set up a blog about food; basically, how she fed her child on £10 a week.  Not only does she give wise advice on how to eat very cheaply; she talks eloquently about her poverty and the system which trapped her in it.  The blog became hugely popular, and Jack committed the cardinal sin; she emerged as an individual.  The media took her up.  Sainsbury's employed her in a marketing campaign.  (She has made it clear that she takes only the living wage from this work and the rest goes to various projects.)  When Channel 5 planned the wretched "debate" following Benefits Street, they invited Jack Monroe onto the panel.  And there she met the stark hatred of the right in the shape of Edwina Currie.  Jack's response can be read in this open letter, published in the Mirror.  The other spouter of vitriol was Katie Hopkins.  Both of them were reacting to an individual who challenges the stereotype.  Between them, Currie and Hopkins did the right no favours, but they showed the true face of hatred - fear.
From the late eighteenth century in Britain the elites feared the Mob.  (It generally had a capital letter because it assumed the shape, in their minds, of a single monstrous creature.)  The poor could be suppressed, but when they combined their sheer numbers made them terrifying.  Riots happened frequently, and the Mob could unleash violence and destruction which was ruthlessly put down.  Remember what happened in 2011.  Rioting broke out in a few places in Britain.  The elites reacted with courts handing down brutal sentences way in excess of what the actual offences warranted.  The position hadn't changed - the Mob must be dealt with severely before it can challenge the established order.
The right cannot deal with poor people as individuals in any way like themselves, so it demonises them.  And then it fears what that demon could do.

The hate campaign

It makes you wonder why Richard Desmond hates the poor so much.  But perhaps the owner of the Express and Channel 5 doesn't hate, or indeed feel anything except the lure of money for himself.
Yesterday the Express added a new word to the lexicon of far-right poor-bashing - "ghettos".  A ludicrously skewed story reckoned to have "uncovered the nation's Benefit Ghettos".  It draws on data for which it gives no source to show that an area of Blackburn has 71.9% of the working age population claiming benefits.  The rest of the story is what you'd expect, except for the fact that they do quote Jack Straw MP to the effect that there are a lot of hostels in the area, distorting the figures.  But who cares about the facts?  Who cares about the working poor who are so badly paid that they have to claim benefits?  No, these are "ghettos".  And I'm sure Desmond understands the significance of that word.
It's all in preparation for another Desmond venture, a programme on Channel 5 tonight advertised in today's Express.  It claims to be based on a YouGov poll showing that "two-thirds of Britons believe the system of state handouts needs an overhaul".  Now, I seem to remember taking part in that poll, and I realised that there was an agenda behind it.  I must have been among the 45% who thought that benefits claimants were portrayed unfairly.  However, it's an excuse for Channel 5 to put on a "debate" featuring - wait for it - "White Dee" from Benefits Street, Katie Hopkins and Edwina Currie.  Ken Livingstone is also in the line-up.  No, of course I won't be watching.

Round-up, 25 Jan 2014

I've been avoiding it.  All that publicity for IDS's speech made me want to head for the hills.  He compared himself to Wilberforce and Shaftesbury.  Well, not quite, but close enough that the journalists made that the story.  And we can be sure that he actually believes it.

I've pinched this brilliant bit of photoshopping from Twitter - Iain Duncan Smith as William Wilberforce.  Let's be clear what Wilberforce really did.  He was an MP who became the parliamentary voice for the movement to abolish the slave trade, and he succeeded in getting that through into law in 1807.  The abolition of slavery itself didn't come until 1833.  As for Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper 7th Earl of Shaftesbury); he was the driving force behind reforms to the laws which allowed child labour and appalling working conditions, and he was involved with many other reforms benefiting the working class.  Both men were evangelical Christians, believing that you couldn't save men's souls until they had decent lives.  IDS really does see himself in that tradition.  (The full text of his speech is here.)  Whenever people bring up evidence that, in so many cases, he is causing huge distress, he and his party literally don't want to know.  They never answer specifics, just repeat the generalities, because specific cases would destroy the picture they have of themselves.
Enough of IDS.  One piece of encouraging news did emerge this week.  Labour has said that it will axe the Work Programme if it gets elected.  (See the Northern Echo story.)  But only when the contracts come to an end.  It would cost far too much to terminate the contracts.  Labour plans to channel the money through local councils and Local Enterprise Partnerships - something I've advocated for a long time.  This will scare the likes of A4e, and will no doubt generate a great deal of lobbying.
And finally, the fall-out from Benefits Street goes on.  A number of people who have featured in the "show" have been arrested on charges of possessing drugs.  I can't, and shouldn't, comment on particular cases.  Anyone who is dealing drugs deserves all they get.  But I have many a time argued with people who bring up the supposedly luxurious lifestyles of those on benefits that anyone who can afford huge TVs, smartphones and foreign holidays must be either up to their eyes in debt or involved in criminality.  Sadly, this doesn't help to vindicate the vast majority of claimants.  I don't think we've heard the end of this noxious production.

Dragging on

There's nothing to report on the A4e front; no sign of the 2012/13 accounts, and no more information on what is obviously a precarious financial position.
I've bookmarked lots of articles featuring IDS and Benefits Street, which few people would want to read.  One I recommend, though, is by Mark Steel on the Independent's website.  It's titled:  We've had ‘Benefits Street’, so how about ‘Bonus street’? A gritty look at the grim reality of life with an unearned £2m windfall".  Or you could read Nick Cohen's piece in the Spectator, titled The Tories' hunger games. (But don't follow his link to Isabel Hardman's piece in the same magazine - The fight for compassionate Conservatism - unless you want to feel nauseous.)  It's indicative of the way the programme has polarised people.  For the Tories it continues to be splendid propaganda, not least for the drive to lower the benefits cap.  As the Daily Mail reports, a particularly nasty MP, Philip Davies, used it to feed IDS the line in a debate in parliament.  "Mr Duncan Smith also revealed he thought the controversial Channel 4 show Benefits Street was helping to win the argument for reform. The Tory minister said viewers were rightly 'shocked' by programmes such as Benefits Street and On Benefits and Proud, featuring people who spend their benefit money on luxuries such as cigarettes and wide-screen TVs, but that they had enabled the Government to force through measures, which he said would put an end to the abuse. Conservative MP Philip Davies said the documentaries will leave working people 'irritated' by the spending of those living on state handouts."  (Is that "compassionate Conservatism, Ms Hardman?)
For some constructive reading I recommend Guy Standing's book The Precariat, published by Bloomsbury in 2011.  It's an excellent analysis, from a sociologist's point of view, of the plight of growing numbers of people around the world, including many who read this blog.

Weekend round-up

Still waiting for A4e's accounts, but as one of our commenters points out, A4e has frequently been late filing its accounts in recent years.  Perhaps of more immediate interest is the down-grading of its credit rating.  But while we await developments there are the usual attempts by the DWP to hide its own incompetence.  The news came out that there has been a blunder with the hated bedroom tax.  Anyone who was on HB before 1996 and has been on it ever since should not be subject to the new legislation; they are covered by an older law which wasn't superseded by the new one.  One estimate is that this applies to around 40,000 people, many of whom have already had to go through the misery of losing their home or trying to exist on less money.  And I reckon that many of the people who have been on HB that long will be disabled or have long-term conditions.  So the government intends to "close the loop-hole".  It's not clear whether that will mean more retro-active legislation, or whether they can just sneak it through on a Statutory Instrument, which doesn't go through Parliament.  Either way, why did those highly-paid civil service lawyers not spot this before?
The DWP tried to distract from this with news that the benefits cap is very successful.  This is perhaps the most popular of all their bites at benefits, because it seems only fair that you shouldn't get more than many people can earn.  But it obscures the fact that the bulk of the money goes to landlords, not the claimants, so if you live in an expensively-rented home and suddenly lose your job, you will lose your home as well; this is shown by the fact that the large majority of the boroughs where people have been affected are in London.
The row about Channel 4's Benefits Street rumbles on.  The Daily Mail's contribution comes from John Bird, who is the founder of the Big Issue.  It's typically confused.  Bird thinks that the show tells the truth about benefits, and he's an expert, he says, because he came through dire poverty himself.  Perhaps the worst example of right-wing hate-mongering came from Katie Hopkins on the BBC's This Week last night.  Who's Katie Hopkins?  Quite.  Her only claim to fame is that she was on The Apprentice; she now writes for the Sun, and seems to have taken the place of Kelvin McKenzie as the nutter of choice for TV producers wanting to anger their viewers.  (The Daily Star called her rent-a-gob.)  Last night she called for more welfare cuts; directly insulted Diane Abbott MP, who showed remarkable restraint by not decking her; and said, "Food banks are a con."  The rage about her on Facebook, most of it, I guess, not from benefits claimants, shows that we might just have reached a point where the general public is embarrassed by this continual demonisation of the poorest.
One bit of news about the DWP itself came from an unlikely source - the Telegraph.  It revealed that more than 1,100 DWP staff have been warned over "prying" on benefits records.  That's breaches of privacy, accessing records they had no right to see.
Finally, how's this for irony?  "BBC misleads public every day on scale of cuts, fumes Cameron".  Yes, it's the Daily Mail describing Cameron getting annoyed on Radio Merseyside when he as accused of treating Liverpool unfairly.  No wonder the BBC has become so tepid in its journalism.

Benefits Street

No, I didn't watch Channel 4's latest contribution to the government's campaign to abolish welfare.  But many of those who did have reacted strongly.  Shane Croucher in the International Business Times calls it "the latest dropping from this beastly documentary genre" and gives some real figures.  Bernadette Meaden on the Ekklesia website calls it "a misleading, harmful caricature" and describes the death threats now being received by some of those who took part.  For the mainstream press, the issue seems to be that the police are investigating possible criminal activity shown on the programme.  The Guardian quotes at length from police Superintendent Danny Long, and also from a Channel 4 spokesman who describes it as "a fair and balanced observational documentary series".  But the Guardian had to close its comments facility after 5 people had reacted with the same disgust (and 814 people up to now have approved a comment which is a re-post of Owen Jones' Facebook reaction).  The Independent hasn't allowed comments at all under its piece on the subject.
There is some feeling that, in the light of the threats to the participants, the rest of the series may be pulled.  That would be the best outcome, of course - apart from some sort of apology from the producers and Channel 4.  But I doubt it.  However, there is a glimmer of a backlash against this sort of trash.

We read that the five former A4e staff who are charged with fraud (the second group) have had their case moved to the Crown Court, where it will be heard on 3 February.