Benefits Britain 1949 on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm

[Essex Lad]

[number 6]

ever considered the media may have an agenda in the continuous onslaught against people on benefits?

[Essex Lad]

Well, I know the hack who wrote the piece. Why not wait until the programme is aired and then decide?

[number 6]

I will .but i won't hold my breath. Let's face it channel 4 is now a dumbed down version of the sun newspaper so we can hardly expect a fair account can we??

[Essex Lad]

I can't see The Sun allowing an alternative Queen's speech in its Christmas edition or putting the call to prayer during Ramadan on its website.

As you say, we shall see...

[Gentleman]

After that hatchet job done with that Margaret and nick program a couple of months I expect to see more of the same from this.

[max_tranmere]

It should be an interesting programme. I would like to know how Benefit's went from being something people would claim as a last resort, when they had difficulties, to becoming a way of life and something that is trendy. There are areas of London when hardly anyone works and many people in those places condemn you if you do. You are the bad one for having a job, supporting yourself, and contributing to society - and they are the respectable ones for choosing (and I mean choosing) to do nothing, contribute nothing to society, sleep till noon every day and just take, take, take from hard working people.

I knew a load of people in a certain district of south London who just couldn't tolerate me and didn't want to know me - all because I had a job. I had "sold out" and I was "playing the system" by working, according to them. Ironically it is them who are playing the system as they are totally supported by it, and are attached to it with something the equivalent to an umbilical cord. Another thing these people would say was how they had "opted out of society". They had actually opted further in as, like I just said, they are totally dependant on it and are kept by it. What they were also doing was a huge betrayal of countless generations of working class people who had worked hard all their lives, helped create many of the favourable things working people have today such as sick pay, tribunals, holiday pay, etc, and instead these people just lie in bed and take from society.

They condemn those who work as bad people, even though they live off those people. Probably the stupidest and most nonsensical argument I've ever heard. Should be an interesting programme tonight. I hope they deal with issues like this too.

[Gentleman]

I'm wondering if they make any mention of how much work paid scaled to today's pay levels.

I'm betting there was a better chance of decent days pay for decent days work then rather than now.

I'd like to hope living costs etc are going to be included when scale them to today's levels.

Of course you could get a job no problem then as a thousand or so job vacancies had been created due to the war unlike today where there simply isn't work.

[David Johnson]

"I knew a load of people in a certain district of south London who just couldn't tolerate me and didn't want to know me - all because I had a job"

"They condemn those who work as bad people, even though they live off those people"

Very humorous, Max

[max_tranmere]

"Very humorous, Max"

Very accurate too. Go to Bermondsey and Deptford in south London.