BBC's 'Saints & Scroungers'

Nazi Propaganda depicted the sinister 'enemy within'...

It has long been asserted by many sceptics that the BBC has been fast becoming the official mouthpiece of the Government, a Government which is fast becoming less enthusiastic about truth and transparency and more enthusiastic about social control and lies. As the recession kicks in (apparently the number of unemployed claiming benefit is actually 6 million, see Sky News here) the Government is looking for scapegoats for its catastrophic management of the economy and the effects of the Global recession for which it takes absolutely no responsibility whatsoever.

'Saints and Scroungers' is a new BBC documentary, showing at 9.15am, a time, incidently, when the working population are at work and the unemployed are at home watching daytime TV. Here is a blurb from the BBC website:

'Two fraudsters so confident of their ability to get away with it appear in newspapers and even on the radio while investigators are closing in. Plus meet 62-year-old David Searle who thought his life was over when he was told he was going blind.'

Now, I don't doubt that benefit fraud is going on and that some people are 'milking the system' for all they can get. However, timing is everything! With men and women getting laid off across the country and the dole queue getting bigger, the Government would really, rather than shelling out millions to a growing population of welfare dependents, make some cuts. How do you make cuts without pissing off everyone? You draw attention to the 'enemy within'. If the Government can convince everyone that benefit fraudsters are everywhere and these conniving, money grabbing old grannies and single mothers are doing the taxpayer out of his hard-earned cash, then you receive public consent for a great deal of nastiness. 

This programme has Department of Work of Pensions writtten all over it. If you can convince the 'respectable majority' that people everywhere are driving around in lambourghinis at your expense, or taking money that does not belong to them, then you can set in motion the net-curtain twitching, "Hello, is that the DWP? Yes I've just seen my neighbour go off to work and he's cheating the system even though he's got 4 mouths to feed, so I'm shopping him!" mentality on which Nazi Germany relied in order to make the Holocaust so horrendously efficient. 

I am not over-reacting and if I am being extreme in comparing such programmes to the German propaganda against the Jews then it is only to serve as an illustration of how bad things can get when Governments are allowed to use news channels as mouthpieces in order to target a specific group of whom they are afraid...in this case, namely, the growing number of people on the dole. That figure is set to rise to 6 million, according to Sky News. 6 million, a huge number and a warning straight from history. As the impact of the recession deepens, I would expect more of these programmes at different times of the day so that resentment towards people on benefits really increases dramatically. Channel 4, for example, is about to run a programme on the exact same subject. The new programme is called 'Benefit Busters'! You couldn't make it up! And heck, what do you know, the Channel 4 programme is episode one of a series as well!

'Hayley Taylor's job is to persuade single mothers on benefits to go back to work. The company she works for, A4E, which is helping to tackle the Government's target of getting 70 per cent of lone parents into paid work by 2010, is the largest welfare reform company in the world. A4E is run by multimillionaire entrepreneur Emma Harrison, who believes her business is 'improving people's lives by getting them into work.' Until recently, the 700,000 lone parents receiving benefit didn't have to look for work until their youngest child was 16. Soon, they must either work, or be looking for work, once their youngest child is seven. At Doncaster A4E, Hayley runs a course called Elevate that aims to give lone parents the skills and confidence to enter the workplace and convince them they'll be better off doing so. Cameras follow her group of ten single mothers during their intensive six-week course to prepare them for work.'

Has someone from the DWP been having a word with the Channel 4 executive as well? Well, whoever these ignorants are, listen up. I know a single mother in London with four kids. She always wanted to work but raising four children on a minimum is totally exhausting. She always seemed to be sick and ill with worry and fatigue. I don't know how she hasn't gone under and ended up in a mental ward! If I had four screaming kids, even when half of them went to school and I had two screaming kids, who I had to look after all on my own, I don't know how I'd cope. Pretty awfully probably! Quite how it is that this shambolic Government, a Government which has wasted an unprecedented amount of money and given a great portion of the country's wealth to staggeringly reckless and incompetent banks and their executives, has the nerve, now, to target those who are the victims of its grave and supremely useless stewardship of the country, is beyond me.  

What about a new idea for a programme called 'Ministers and Money-Makers?' Episode 1: 'Is your MP on the make?' Episode 2: 'Expenses at your expense.' Heck, why not a new BBC series called, 'The BBC: How We Spend Your Hard Earned Money.' Episode 1: Brazenly Government-supporting documentaries. Episode 2: 'Paying arrogant chat show hosts 4 million quid a year'? Episode 3: 'We've got expenses too, you know!'