Image Credit: Channel 5
The UK has a strange obsession with people who claim benefits from the government. It is one that is steadily leading to an unreasonable hatred of the impoverished, in which those who seek financial aid are demonized as scroungers while the rest of the country must go to work in order to earn their keep.
It is a narrative that is preventing anger from being directed towards those who are truly deserving of it, such as the bankers who plunged the region into the recession and the giant corporations who have refused to pay their rightful amount of tax, instead causing people to “hate downwards” and target those who are less fortunate than them. No matter how many studies are reported highlighting that benefit fraud isn’t as prominent as we are led to believe – it actually accounted for just 0.7% of welfare spending in 2013/14 – there is no denying that is sold to us as a major cause of the UK’s financial troubles. In fact, public perception of how much benefit fraud costs the country is 34 times higher than it actually is, despite it actually paling in comparison to tax evasion schemes employed by the likes of Gary Barlow, who has got away with doing so because he’s got a lot of money and writes music while those seeking benefits merely leave in abject poverty and struggle to feed themselves and their families.
This disjointed perception of how much benefit fraud really affects the UK taxpayer is perpetuated by TV broadcasters, who fill their schedules with shows specifically catering to the angry mentality that the majority of those seeking financial aid are doing so illegitimately, thus adding negative connotations to a system that has been put in place in order to benefit citizens of the UK and encouraging people to go without what they are legally entitled to. This is evidenced in Channel 5’s TV schedule, which has been doing the rounds on the Internet due to its alarming obsession with those who seek benefits.
.@channel5_tv You don’t happen to be pushing a certain narrative for when those who are employed are watching TV? pic.twitter.com/0F3VSuBiAP
— Daniel Sobey-Harker (@sobeyharker) August 25, 2015
This trend of pushing shows demonizing those on benefits has been deemed “Benefits Porn,” a title initially used in reference to Channel 4’s hugely divisive and incendiary show Benefits Street. But Channel 4 is in no way the only offender when it comes to placing a target upon the heads of the UK’s poor, and Channel 5’s incredibly one-note schedule solely consisting of shows dedicated to focusing upon benefits “cheats,” people on benefits getting married and 12-year-olds on benefits is emblematic of the shameful agenda being pushed in the UK, with the tweet featured above having since been posted on Reddit where Channel 5’s TV listing was widely criticised.
Unfortunately these shows are geared to appeal to those who have already made up their mind regarding so-called “benefits scroungers”, and who have already decided that Britain’s unemployed and penniless are more worthy of their ire than the people and corporations who are actually dealing damage to the financial state of the country. As long as TV shows such as those broadcast by Channel 5 continue to guide the narrative in terms of which people British citizens should be enraged by, then benefits will continue to be treated as a dirty word.
