RELATIVE AUTONOMY: MEDIA, FILM & POLITICS
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Combat Channel 4's 'Tricks of the Dole Cheats'

13/8/2012

 
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Now that the nationalistic frenzy of the Olympics is over, 'public service' television is reverting to a more open assault on the working class. Channel 4, not for the first time, is indulging in some shameless class propaganda tonight in the form of Tricks of the Dole Cheats, which is scheduled for broadcast at 8pm. For those who'd rather take action than get angry, there is a Facebook page supplying more information about the production, as well as some useful counter-arguments and some suggestions as to what people can do to protest.

Postscript: As many people have commented in the social media, the programme broadcast by Channel 4 focused less on the 'dole cheats' themselves - raising the question of why the programme was given such a stigmatising title - than on the ways in which slack procedures at Job Centres allow claimants to 'get away with' (as the presenter Morland Sanders put it) not looking for work. Despite this slightly unexpected focus, the programme nevertheless managed to demonise benefit claimants as well as Job Centre staff (many of whom feel uneasy that the government is trying to prevent them from helping those in need). As the void blog argues, the programme also appeared to be 'laying the ground for privatisation of benefit services, with a handful of recruitment sector spivs brought in to show how much better they would be at the job'.

Christian Garland's email response to Channel 4 makes very clear why such programming is unacceptable, setting the programme in the context of the government's current drive to cut the cost of benefits paid to the poor and disabled:

Dear Channel 4,

I write to you to add my voice to the many people unhappy with the Dispatches programme Tricks of the Dole Cheats, aired at 20:00 on Monday evening (13/08/12). To start with, the salacious, eye-grabbing title, one that the Daily Mail or Express - or for that matter, The Sun, would be proud of, this was clearly aimed at generating maximum tabloid hysteria, and of course, viewing figures, for a shabby apology for 'factual' programming, which even by the (very) low standard set by Channel 4, scraped a new all-time low.

Whilst the quality of Channel 4's factual output - as for all other kinds sadly - has been in steep and serious decline for the best part of 20 years now, what is especially dubious about this 30 minute tabloid hack job, was the extremely unwelcome contribution it made to the Tory-led coalition's ongoing assault on anyone unfortunate enough to have to have dealings with the punitive benefits system, as well as the media's propagandist line in the demonisation of them. 

The programme's title was also extremely misleading, since the expected 'tricks' of 'dole cheats' - seriously, was that copy and pasted from The Sun online, and slightly revised to avoid copyright breaches? - were not forthcoming at all. It would have been contemptable enough if this had been another straightforward attack on the unemployed and other claimants, but the programme still had much to offer in that regard, even though the title was completely different from the implied content. 

Morland Sanders, the presenter, who in the best tradition of those who speak from where they don't know - or have any idea - took the miserable reality of claiming JSA, and the requirement that claimants record what they have 'been doing' to find employment every two weeks when signing on, as 'getting away with it'. As someone who has had that distinctly tepid pleasure in the past on two seperate occasions, I can speak from experience, and tell you that were a claimant not to undertake this (yes, largely pointless) fortnightly task, they would have their JSA frozen forthwith. To quote and counter Morland Sanders here, a JSA claimant can most certainly not '[...] write on their jobseeker's agreement, "I'm not going to apply for this job, and I'd rather stay on benefits". So, to answer Morland Sanders' speculative assertion, 'It does make me think, that if you wanted to actively avoid work and stay on benefits, you could.' No, you couldn't. 

The requirement is part of the punitive workfare regime that has existed in some form or another in the UK, since 1984 - a sickly apt year. The Tory coalition has accelerated and intensified the punitive welfare-to-work regime of putting claimants under constant pressure and always shifting the burden for unemployment back onto the shoulders of the individual: social problems, societal problems, become individual failings, and a matter of 'not trying hard enough' and 'not applying yourself'. Recently of course, Grayling and Duncan-Smith have excelled themselves in trying to introduce the 'work programme' in which claimants are mandated to work unpaid or have their derisory JSA withdrawn - the kind of choice offered by the DWP being thus: you don't have one. The sick irony of all of this 'getting people back to work' is that there is none to go to. 

The programme made much of the cost to the taxpayer of those working whilst claiming benefits - £226 million; but offshore tax avoidance costs in the region of £15-25 billion, so it is curious Channel 4 should choose to focus on the 0.8 % of benefit expenditure lost to fraud, and not the ongoing efforts of the super-rich and corporations to avoid paying tax in the UK, a figure which dwarfs the relatively tiny one spent on benefit fraud, and at a time when Gideon Osborne repeats the necessity of a further £18 billion of cuts to what little remains of the already inadequate social safety net. Once again, 99.2% of benefit expenditure was not fraudulent, and it is remarkable that Channel 4 should prefer to focus on those at the bottom of the social pyramid, something it has a tawdry recent history of indulging in, what others have called 'poverty porn' - Benefit Busters, The Fairy Jobmother, etc. There is, after all, only so long dinner parties can be enlivened by chatter of house prices and getting the kids into a good school, so this sort of vicarious titiliation offers something to avoid that sort of repetition; however, it does nothing at all for Channel 4's reputation.

CG

Christian Garland link
19/8/2012 10:01:17 am

Duncan Smith, what a prick: the media and the BBC are, and always have been extremely good at toeing the line; they do not ever present or allow anything approaching alternative let alone critical voices, so the Daily Fail's long-running fantasy that it is 'socialist' is pretty funny.

'Sought every little bit of bad news’ on jobs? So not at all like he and his party (and every other one vying for power) does when selectively presenting information, to use every bit of (non) information and making it appear either much better or much worse than it actually is? ‘Last month, there was a marginal rise in youth unemployment so they centred on that.' Yes, good…Not that 'they' were exactly calling the cooked statistical books into question. The fact that besides the 2.5 million+ unemployed, a figure that is more like 6-7 million, - all of whom are of course, 'lazy-feckless-workshy-scroungers' don't forget - there are all those other claimants who have the temerity to be sick, disabled, or terminally ill, so the (selectively) quoted figures are fucking meaningless anyway. ‘They had popped those words into her mouth. They had come in and said “let’s just sit on this and flatten it”. If the unemployment figures had gone up, we would have been on the BBC TV News at Six and Ten and would have got the blame.’ Well there you are you see…not at all like a Tory (or Lib Dem, or Labour) policy hack issuing a laundered press release steeped in bogus positivity, is it?

‘This time it came down so they cast doubt on the figures. [Flanders] said it could be industry is so bad they have to take on two people where one person could do the job.' What? 'Have to'…So like claimants having to work unpaid or 'prove' they are entitled to derisory benefits? I mean, since we’re talking compulsion here…Good example of what I mean about the media being the lapdogs of the rich and powerful: one of the main reasons why there is a chronic problem of not just unemployment, but underemployment, is because bosses don’t want to pay full-time wages, or ‘create jobs’, so Flanders’ far-from-radical standpoint could easily mean she is suggesting employers become ‘leaner’, cut costs to boost revenues, and employ fewer, thus more people forced onto JSA, even fewer job ‘opportunities’, and so even more cutthroat competition for the few remaining jobs that exist - set against the punitive workfare regime. What was that about the socialist BBC being anti-government?

This old-school crap is vintage too: 'Our [check the patriotic/nationalist subtext] private industry is unbelievably robust compared to much of Europe.' Yes, because it has those famously 'flexible' labour markets, where bosses can hire and fire at will, unlike mainland Europe, where a modicum of collective action at the point of production is still (just) possible - seriously, why do you think the bourgeoisie of all Europe, in fact the entire world, rushes to London?

Stephen Harper
20/8/2012 01:08:58 pm

Can't disagree with too much of that, Mr Garland. And since you mention the BBC, let's not forget that the BBC has broadcast several series of Saints and Scroungers, a television programme that has arguably done more than any other to demonise the unemployed in recent years.

howtostopsnorings.com link
16/5/2013 05:58:53 am

i have also had the same thought about the title of the show. its a real stigmatized one. i liked the blog that you hace shared here giving justification on the things have happend. keep sharing and updating.

cheats link
25/9/2012 03:04:02 am

Good work…unique site and interesting too… keep it up…looking forward for more updates


Comments are closed.

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