Dog On A String Theory

Having just watched John ‘No Tommy, you weren’t there!’ Sweeney expose Trump on Panorama (in much the way Trump’s syrup exposes his vanity) I caught a trailer for the latest piece of BBC anti scrounger torture. On Thursday the Laura and Hardy of the Apprentice, Margaret Mountford (nee ‘Rodupyourarse’) and Nick ‘is it me or has someone farted’ Hewer preside over another slice of car crash TV, sympathetically titled ‘We Pay All Your Benefits’. The premise seems to be: gather a group of claimants and a group of taxpayers and…FIGHT!

I don’t know how much more of this I can take. The trailer featured a revealing interlude wherein, it was implied, at least one claimant was getting more than they ‘should’ by virtue of a household menagerie. They seemed to have a lot of pets: dogs, cats, lizard. Presumably this is the dog-on-a-string scam whereby people, according to urban myth, usually crusties, get themselves a dog with a rope for a lead and then claim more benefit. File under: girls get pregnant to get free housing.

What are we meant to learn from this? Are we to deny pets to people once they start claiming? Are we to ban claimants from having pets, as if they all stand outside pet shops with their JSAg’s eyeing the collection of staffies with a view to claiming more. This is patently nonsensical. What is the point of this? People of course are meant to think that benefits are, universally (on the basis of a tiny sample), too generous. But what does that even mean? Too large for what? Presumably people are meant to sit in a cold grey room on a milking stool staring out the window waiting for a job. No doubt some claimants will have modern looking TV sets, probably an xbox, a laptop, a smartphone, because we all do.

Even if the viewing audience comes to that conclusion, what are they meant to do? This is the problem: people are being conditioned to hate and resent with no outlet. This is extremely dangerous. This is why disabled people get hassled in the street. This is why people phone up the benefit fraud hotline to rat on their neighbours despite the overwhelming majority of such reports being unfounded.

Of course this will be predictable: what kind of people would apply to be on this show? What are the conditions set during the audition (where they decide who would make good tv)? Isn't it likely that the taxpayer contingent is going to be more biased toward the judgemental sort; the people already predisposed to believing the government line about the rate of benefit? This of course will be reinforced by who they picked to be on the opposing 'team'. Likely the claimants will be those that are less likely to resist - or so bolshy they are to be seen as representative of the perceived antisocial nature of all claimants, of course.

This reminds of the time Pig of the Dump (my name for Digby Jones, Lord of the Tax Avoiders) interrogated a couple of young unemployed me for Panorama. Had the show been mute I wouldn't have been surprised to see him hand them each a shovel and then wave a pistol at them until they started digging: he had taken them, bedecked like a gangster in some afghan coat, to industrial waste ground to basically call them scroungers. These kids obviously thought they were, in some way, doing the right thing participating in this BBC farce, but nope. Instead they got the honour of having to justify their already meagre existences to the country's top tax avoidance apologist and business popecunt. Unbelievable - and they were hardly a pair of rogues and rapscallions. They were quiet and thoughtful. They didn't spend their time robbing and a-stealing. But that's not good enough: WE PAY ALL YOUR BENEFITS!

I haven’t seen the show yet, as I can’t travel through time, but this guy’s none too pleased. One love y’all.