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Benefits Street
2014 · TV series · documentary · 50 min episodes · 2 seasons
This documentary series reveals the reality of life on benefits, as the residents of one of Britain's most benefit-dependent streets invite cameras into their tight-knit community
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6 comments on Hacker News
This tactic is often used to get attention. There was outrage about this in the late 2000s when reality TV/talk show series followed people in a particular poverty stricken area in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefits_Street
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jeremy_Kyle_Show
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5455122
I remember thinking at the time that these were quite exploitative.
>Eastern European migration is not seen positively by many British people
Which is incredibly ironic.
I love how Jimmy Carr put it: "These damn Romanians and Bulgarians, coming over here, stealing the jobs of our Poles." LOL
Or that British TV show 'Benefits Street' or something like that, where the only house on the street who's inhabitants were not on welfare and actually had jobs, was full of Romanians.
The term "documentary" covers a broad range of material. There are in-depth explorations of fact or investigative reporting at one end; and populist fly on the wall fluff at the other end. Benefits Street is definitely on the fluffier end. There was little attempt to explain how benefits work; what the rules are or how they're applied to most people.
The OFCOM investigation is, I think, evidence that the programme was low quality, and focused on sensationalism rather than accuracy. (Although they didn't uphold any of the complaints).
Channel Four is publically owned but is not non-commercial -- it has to mostly fund itself; it carries ads and sells its programmes.
Channel 4 is a "public service" channel only in the sense that it was one of the first four channels to come into existence at a time when the quid pro quo for having a broadcast licence was that challenging, worthy, high-quality programmes were broadcast.
Today, Channel 4 is still technically a PSB, but it's not and has never been "non-commercial" - it shows adverts and makes profits just like any other commercial channel.
Calling "Benefits Street" a documentary would be like saying that Jersey Shore or The Osbournes was a documentary. It's not.
> Plenty of European examples abound where despite generous - some would argue very generous - state dispensed benefits certain sections of the society just do not respond positively in measures of improvement of their own station in life much less "working on things to improve everyone's else (lives)".
For many years people on English out of work benefits were not allowed to do voluntary work or be a student - those were things that would have stopped the benefits.
This carried over to some of the disability benefits. If you did voluntary work to prepare you to get back into full time work your benefits would be stopped.
Citing benefits street, and calling it a documentary, is an odd choice. Do you think that programme has any credibility?
If a government were to do that for everyone it seems pretty obvious that society will be better off - people will spend their time working on things to improve everyone's life rather than worrying about how to afford their rent
The incredulity of this is plainly galling.
How does one draw a broad conclusion like that?
Plenty of European examples abound where despite generous - some would argue very generous - state dispensed benefits certain sections of the society just do not respond positively in measures of improvement of their own station in life much less "working on things to improve everyone's else (lives)".
A good - and I admit quite controversial - account of this kind of malaise is recounted in the British Channel 4 documentary, Benefits Street [1] [2]
[1] Benefits Street Season 01 Episode 01
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlrLp-R4g_M
[2] Benefits Street
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefits_Street