The BBC is to set poverty stricken Pleb against poverty stricken Pleb in a vicious and exploitative TV entertainment that makes Benefits Street look like a heart-warming examination of the lives of the ‘poor’.
‘The BBC has defended a new TV reality show pitting unemployed and low-paid workers against each other for a cash prize, which has been accused of echoing film the Hunger Games, arguing it is a “serious social experiment”.
The show, called Britain’s Hardest Grafter, is seeking 25 of Britain’s poorest workers with applications limited to those who earn or receive benefits totalling less than £15,500 a year.’
Russell Crowe received $5,000,000 for his part in Gladiator, the winner of the BBC’s show, Britain’s Hardest Gladiator, wins a not insignificant £15,500.
Ironically, after all the fuss about Benefits Street, the guardian publishes this defence of the BBC and also one of Benefits Street in retrospect so as to bolster its defence of the BBC…
It’s a bit rich moaning about poverty porn
Even if exploitation is sometimes at play in these shows – and perhaps it is; happily, I can’t claim to have seen them all – this surely doesn’t discount the possibility that the BBC and Twenty Twenty can between them deliver a serious-minded series, one that provokes more than just the standard responses from left and right (in fact, it has been commissioned by current affairs, not entertainment, so the aspiration is there, if nothing else). The stories of the poor do need to be told, don’t they? Or are we saying that we would rather wipe them from our screens altogether?
Benefits Street was just a reality TV programme that revealed a few truths that the liberal do-gooders didn’t like to admit whilst the BBC’s latest effort will be truly exploitative and demeaning for the participants…the ‘winner’ hardly getting a prize worth the effort….the BBC no doubt anticipating any money made during filming being subtratced from their benefits giving the BBC a chance to show the ‘evils’ of the welfare system under the Tories.
‘Britain’s Hardest Worker’ is just ‘Gladiator’ repackaged for a modern age…the desperation of those in need exploited for entertainment purposes by the caring BBC which spent the last 5 years trying to shame the Coalition government over welfare reform…..the programme being commissioned by BBC Current Affairs…and blatantly being based upon the minimum wage rate….is Aunty being political whislt trying to hide that politicisation?
Why does the BBC never show us the uncomfortable truth like this?….extraordinarily from the Mirror….
Are these children victims of the Tory welfare cap or sheer parental stupidity?
It would take a harder heart than mine to see a sobbing 12-year-old being thrown out of her home and not care.
Autumn Parker was pictured being comforted by her dad Lee as their family were evicted after months struggling to pay their rent under the Tories’ benefit cap.
Lee lost his job, the council stopped paying their rent, their private landlord couldn’t take the losses, and along came the bailiffs.
So far, so bad luck – how many of us are only one or two pay cheques from needing the welfare safety net which Dave’s stormtroopers have been merrily slashing great holes in?
None of that is Autumn’s fault. And nor is the £500-worth of SLR Nikon camera slung around her neck in photographs of the eviction.
Because that’s her parents’ fault.
Lee and Katrina Parker appear to be not just irresponsible, but the kind of parents that make the rest of us despair.
Despite never once in their lives being in a position to afford it, they have seven children. The eldest, a daughter, was born in 1994 when Lee and Katrina were aged 19 and 21.
Its take a harder heart to see a 12 year old girl gang raped and sold around the country and not care. Oh wait no it wouldn’t it’s called multiculturalism and as such should be encouraged at best ignored
Of course it helps if you view the Working Class as White Trash who invite their fate by not working nor voting Labour with sufficient zeal …
It is expoitation and they know it. One more reason to send the BBC into oblivion.
A man or woman might earn little but have a real sense of their own worth. I have known plenty such in my time as I have done many things. Money is not the measure of a person and in a truly conservative society it would never be so. I work as often as I can voluntarily on a small railway line. I work often with a man who had polio as a child and was in leg irons for years. He is still badly disabled. He has worked all his life. First for the railways and then as a street sweeper for the council until ill health forced him to retire relunctantly in his early 60s. . He is wholly admirable and a man of substance He has raised a family and is well respected in our small town.
The overpaid so called educted liberal classes have no conception of how to measure a man’s worth. Which is one reason our socirety is so deteriorating into greed and self absorbed desire for so called fulfilment.
I like most of you have met and heard these overpaid pontificating liberal elites. They have nothing to say I want or need to hear. They are no part of the real England and their day is coming to an end.
Very well said, Dave S. This was the attitude prevalent in the fifties and sixties when I was growing up – proud people, regardless of how little money they had or how able-bodied they were, for whom a handout was like an admittance of failure to themselves and their families. They just kept battling on regardless of the adversity they faced and were all the healthier in mind, body and spirit for it.
Bravo dave s, bravo.
It used to be called pride, and it mattered – not least because you knew who was in genuine need and deserving of your support.
Old Labour would have understood. The failed second rate lecturers from third rate former polytechnics who seem to dominate the modern labour movement just haven’t got a clueabout real workers.
“Self absorbed desire for so called fulfilment”
You mean enjoying yourself?
This mythical “real England” sounds like a barrel of laughs.
You mean enjoying yourself?
I’d interpret it as the modern obession with ‘living the dream’, regardless of how unrealistic or way beyond your means and talent that might be.
dave s wrote: Money is not the measure of a person and in a truly conservative society it would never be so.
It is tragedy of our society that you should even have to mention this obvious truism, and that I, and others need to applaud it. The BBC, and the “so-called educated elite”, obviously think that they have to be paid enormous salaries and pensions, as a true measure of their worth.
So it is that BBC newsreaders, with a 2.2degree or worse in E. Lit., get six figure salaries, for reading English.
PS: Correction. A 2.2 degree in E.Lit, qualifies one in the BBC to be a Climate Change expert.
Great comment dave s.
Cheap TV at it’s cheapest. I’ve had another weekend of not watching any BBc. The weekend schedule seems to resemble the week day schedule I’m sure I remember the BBc saying they were going to cut down on antiques & houses programs at some stage.
I’m jolly well looking forward to this programme, it’ll be rather like a trip to the zoo.
I’m intrigued as to how these manual labouring, born losers go about their business.
Alan,
“Benefits Street was just a reality TV programme that revealed a few truths that the liberal do-gooders didn’t like to admit whilst the BBC’s latest effort will be truly exploitative and demeaning for the participants…giving the BBC a chance to show the ‘evils’ of the welfare system”
I see, so portraying the unemployed as worthless scum via the edited fiction of “reality TV” is revealing the truth.
Yet, “showing the ‘evils’ of the welfare system” that poor people have to deal with on a daily basis is exploitative and demeaning.
Really Alan I’m very sorry for swearing, but you quite obviously haven’t got a fucking clue what your talking about.
Oh dear dez, you really don’t have the intelligence to think about complex issues do you. Go away and write out the words to ‘red flag’ 100 times.
Successive Labour governments have created a state-dependent welfare-seeking class. People who have never worked, don’t want to work, have no intention of ever working because if they play the game right, they get to live on a state funded gravy train. It’s a combination of low expectations, a trashed up education system, and plenty of money to sit of the sofa and stuff themselves with pizza while watching daytime television. They have become institutionalised in their own homes. Of course they vote Labour, provided they are not so brain dead they get lost on the way to the polling station. They will never vote for a party who threatens to take away what they consider to be rightly theirs. I call it criminal gerrymandering. Shirley Porter, all is forgiven.
Maggie’s working class army, those salt of the earth shipbuilders, miners, car workers, steelworkers (hmmm, all nationalised industries that went belly up, seems to be a pattern here)? That generation that lost their jobs en-masse because the game was up for state funded lame ducks (lefties endlessly told us it would be impossible for them to find work ever again). That’s over 20 years ago. They’ve gone, they’re history. Don’t exist, get over it. Those victims you worship are lost in the passage of time. Of course people might lose their jobs from time to time. They know what they have to do. Find another job, move house if necessary, retrain if necessary. That’s the way the world works now. Don’t insult those people by lumping them together with the state-dependent class.
Maggie’s working class army, those salt of the earth shipbuilders, miners, car workers, steelworkers (hmmm, all nationalised industries that went belly up, seems to be a pattern here)? That generation that lost their jobs en-masse because the game was up for state funded lame ducks
The game was up not just because of state funding, but Margaret Thatcher saw that countries such as Korea, Japan, and more to the point China, would make such industries in the West, state funded or not, uneconomic and irrelevant. The West, and not just the UK, could not compete with China in “old industry”. A new industry had to be found, and quick.
Dez, You appear from what you write to be one of those sympathetic, but cruel, idiots who want to keep people trapped in a horrific benefits nightmare. I know of what I speak, I was trapped in benefits penury for almost a decade and it was awful. The benefits system back then was a trap. It was almost impossible without marketable skills to get off benefits.
Things, happily, are different today. A life on benefits should never be a lifestyle choice. It should be an awful nightmarish existence, purely to motivate people to get off benefits. People DO have a choice. If they are not happy, it is now much easier, and it pays, to get off benefits and into work. Zero hours contracts are brilliant as a short term measure, for gaining experience and good references which should be used to climb a career ladder out of poverty. I have no sympathy for those who moan that being poor on benefits is hard. If they do not like it, do what I did and get skills and training to get a job, then keep learning and get a better job. It is not rocket science. The help IS there and the only people responsible for living in long-term poverty are those who remain in poverty and do nothing about it, but moan.
Having a benefits system which is “comfortable” enough to live on is actually cruel and unfair. It is unfair to those who get trapped by it, and unfair on those who have to pay for it.
And Dez and Alan, I am very sorry for swearing, but seriously Dez, you quite obviously haven’t got a fucking clue what your writing about.
‘Benefits Street’ missed a trick. They should have gone looking for the nearest Eastern European grafters. Bet they weren’t far away.
Excellent comments from someone who actually knows about benefits & how to get out of the trap, good on you Geyza!
Yet, “showing the ‘evils’ of the welfare system” that poor people have to deal with on a daily basis is exploitative and demeaning.
Ah, you must have missed ‘Lord’ Prescott’s (unintentionally) comical series where he asked a 30-odd year old living a very comfortable lifestyle with his wife and two kids when he last worked. The answer: ‘I’ve never worked’. Comedy gold, with Prescott’s face doing the best impression of a slapped arse ever to be seen on tv.
Then there’s Abu Hamza spending years in his detached London gaffe filled with his terrorist spawn, courtesy of our benefits system and the ECHR.
And don’t get me going on ‘disability’ benefits!
Still waiting for you apology, btw, reminder coming up soon. Hope your researchers have sharpened up their act since your monster gaffe.
P.S. As a socialist, dez, what is it that draws you on here to defend the BBC?
As a socialist he’s not happy about the truth being discussed!
“As a socialist, dez, what is it that draws you on here to defend the BBC?”
Hate !
Then vote here dez or anyone else who has not
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/end-the-bbc-licence-fee
The hunger games.
The BBC make as much political advantage as it can out of a few food banks.
The BBC does not produce any “Marxism after 100 days”, pre-election documentaries,
Because there were no elections. And the programmes would show.
Russian famine 1921-1922.
Russian famine part 2 1932-1933.
PRC famine 1956-1961.
North Korean Famine – continuing.
Ethiopian famine.
Mongolian famine.
etc
etc
The fact that in the failed Marxist models, which the BBC staff worship, the biggest famines, ever, took place: with monotonous regularity, is ignored by the BBC.
But let us not stop now. The death, by starvation, of seventy million people indicates that more Marxism is required. You know it makes sense.
How about “The Communists, a Warning from History” ?
DR .. a warning from history.
You will grow old waiting for the BBC, or any TV station, to broadcast that.
Dad’s Army still on TV after fourty years.
Why?
Incorrect answer #1 Because it is the funniest comedy ever made. Wrong.
IA #2 Because millions of people write in requesting repeats. Wrong.
IA #3 Because the thrifty BBC saves licence payer’s money. Wrong, very, very, wrong.
Correct answer.
Because the BBC wants to broadcast “Nazi” every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day, on all its stations.
Because they have been defined as the bad boys ever since they invaded the paradise that was the USSR.
Because the BBC received opinion, which is that the only people worse than the Nazis were white British males, who deserve to be compared to Nazis every second of every etc.
Because there are people of influence, inside and outside the BBC, who have a, long term, vested interest in encouraging the BBC in its attempts at re-writing history. In diverting attention as much as possible away from other events in the twentieth century.
Such as the origins of Marxism.
Such as the origin of Marx.
Such as the origins of most theoretical Marxists.
Such as the origins of most important European Marxist leaders and their deputies and most high ranking officials.
Such as the origins of many of the secret police leaders who administered the Gulags and similar benevolent holiday camps.
Such as the origins of many spies, traitors and other malcontents in Western countries which did not become Communist despite their best efforts at espionage, treason, fomenting social unrest etc.
The one defining difference between The West and Marxist states. Western states have to build fences and walls to keep people out. The Marxists build barriers to keep people in.
Al-Beeb were initially going to float this idea, showing a “religion of peace” existing in perfect harmony, no matter what obstacles arose, but the “pilot” went wrong, and so they chose white “plebs” instead…
The white man in the background started this.
all white men must die.
It might prove to be even more amusing than watching the semi literate , underclass morons on the Jeremy Kyle show !
i tell you what,i am ashamed to be called working class these days after watching that evil dirty portrayal of working class people in that scum filled new series of benefit street being showed mondays channel 4,these people on that programme are vile drug taking criminal parasites and drunk lazybones who make the lifes of decent hard working class people on that estate a misery as shown in last weeks episode,i dread, but i will watch this new load of old benefits porn crap about these benefit scroungers that bbc 1 will be showing soon,more benefit scroungers scum porn made by middle class leftie bbc producers.that is all it is.
Actually I think this is the perfect show for the BBC to broadcast. There will be little exploitation and lots of patronization. I can’t imagine any of the losers being shown in a bad light – they’ll be congratulated on their new-found skill of getting out of bed before BBC Breakfast ends.