This is depressing but it's a perfect example of the hate coming from the tabloid papers. The Daily Express main headline for the 2nd September 2011 is "4M scrounging families in Britain." The text goes on to explain that there are nearly four million households where no one works.
Where do I start with this?
I don't have the figures to hand, but I am sure that a fairly large number of those households are people who are too sick or disabled to work. There are approximately 2.5 million unemployed people in the UK, so even being generous and assuming that none of those on job seekers allowance are couples and so they are all living one per household, that leaves at least 1.5 million households that are living on Incapacity Benefit, Employment and Support Allowance or Income Support.
The editors of the Express must know this, so they have deliberately chosen to call people who are too sick or disabled to work "scroungers." The word scrounger is a derogatory term intended to portray people as deliberately taking from others. Except they are wrong. I haven't met anyone who is too sick to work that wouldn't work if they could. Most of us who are sick or disabled are desperate to do something meaningful and worthwhile instead of feeling useless. Then there are the 2.5 million unemployed people - at the last count there were only half a million job vacancies for them to apply for. Half a million might be able to get work - assuming no turnover from other jobs into those vacancies - and the other 2 million can't have a job. An insignificant number of those people might have the skills, ideas and circumstances to be self employed. The editors of the Daily Express have no idea of how many households are made up of people who are able to work but do not want to. In the end it boils down to a deliberate attack on people unfortunate enough to have to live on state benefits, and the use of a derogatory term like scrounger is simply spreading hate. There is no excuse and the Daily Express should apologise.
The Express is filthy scum.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, The Daily Express, under its psychopathic proprietor Richard Desmond, has withdrawn from being accountable to the Press Complaints Commission, so that deliberate hate speech like this (and hate speech about benefits claimants is quite literally a weekly front-page occurrence from this so-called "newspaper") is gotten away with. The Daily Express is a cowardly and despicable grubby little rag, representative of everything that is anthropologically abhorrent, and thus needs to be closed down as soon as is possible.
ReplyDeleteI'm unemployed. I was self-employed. Suddenly there's no work for me. I tried. I've had to go back on benefits and am made to feel ashamed. It's not my fault, but the climate and these kinds of hate-filled tabloid opinions conspire to make me feel like that. I had a choice.....I could go in benefits, or become homeless and hungry. I've applied for jobs....I don't even get an interview. I'm intelligent, talented, and eager to work. I spent most of my adult life(I'm in my 50's) bringing up my children. Not only am I a dole scrounger, but also that most evil member of society...the single parent. And there's plenty of women out there just like me.
ReplyDeletemy blood boils at the shit the tabloids write, and more so at the sheeple fools who believe every word
You can assume those figures include Express journalists. None of them ever work, unless by an extreme stretch of the imagination you can count propping up a bar and writing lies as working. And as they are all scumbag timewasters, they have to be scrounging off somebody.
ReplyDeleteExpress Group withdrew from the Press Complaints Commission in January, I think that says all you need to know about their attitude towards the people they attack. (Not to mention why we need to replaced PCC with a statutory body!)
ReplyDeleteAs Mason Dixon Autistic has pointed out previously, how these figures are arrived at may way be inaccurate anyway. Unless they track every member of each of these 4 million households to every address they have ever lived at during their working age the statistics can't possibly be accurate.
ReplyDeleteIsn't there something like over 10 million disabled people in the UK? (that does include retired people) So, 4 million not working really isn't that shocking.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if a person on benefits sent Richard Desmond a CV he'd offer them a job? In fact, why doesn't everybody on benefits try it!
ReplyDeleteI am growing so very, very tired of all this scapegoating. The only relief from it is that the Mail is currently focussing on Gypsies instead, but knowing that another group is being scapegoated doesn't actually make me feel good, just gives me time to catch my breath before defending myself again.
ReplyDeleteI'm on IB. I shan't be in the least bit surprised if I don't get ESA, but once on JSA and sending out job applications everywhere, I shall be very surprised if I get a job.
"So you've got dodgy eyesight, dodgy hearing, dodgy joints and you're a bit mad with a tendency to burst into tears or pour out all your woes on the nearest person? We'd love to employ you!"
It's a bit difficult to take moral posturing seriously when it comes from an organ of Richard Desmond, Britain's "pornographer in chief". Asian Babes, anyone?
ReplyDeleteThe royal family are the biggest benefit scroungers that there is...
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