General Chat

Anyone watched this?
I quite like white Dee and the rest of the gang.
My opinion is that the Governments have allowed this situation to evolve and you can't then blame the people in the system for living this way.

WATCHED ALL THE PROGRAMS,IT MUST
BE HARD FOR FAMILIES IN THE STREET NOT ON BENEFITS

Hi Newby I watched the first one, but I got so annoyed I refused to watch the rest :-|

But the people on benefits are on these benefits because of decisions approved by successive Governments we have voted into power,
This programme is showing the results of their decisions .. passing the buck to blame the people who are now in this system rather than looking at the the real reason why they are there in the first place..
Scapegoats
Edit
Hiya Mersey xxx

I did have some sympathy with the young couple and the two children. They desperately needed some help in keeping house and controlling their little boy. The young wife, in particular seemed to have some realisation of their plight. Hope they have a better life.

Who knows how these people have ended up on long term benefits but I imagine once you get to that stage its hard to get back up.

Vera

Everyone is so ready to slate these people .. but they are a product of decisions made by sucessive governments. (sorry about the spelling)
The daily Whale keeps on with their tabloid hits and judgements about the people who agreed to be filmed but no one seems to understand this is the way the UK benefits system has evolved over the last few decades..
It's really easy to make judgements when watching but it is TV designed to create outrage aimed at an easy target.

It gauled me how council/government can think putting families in these conditions....

I quite like the programme, it showed how they manage their lives day in day out , looked a very close street , help each other out when in need the best way they can,watch out for each other and have some wonderful careing charactors..
They even cleaned the rubbish up as the council wouldn't do it , made a statement by lining it across the road til the lorry finely came...
This was very much like in the 60s/70s I remember on council estates where you would get a mixture working & non workers, back doors left unlocked , but always watched out for one another & helped when needed..
People are far too quick to judge these days , as we dont know the circumstances they went thro for getting to this point in time..
please dont knock my spelling , its old age lol

Having only watched the repeat of the first episode, I can’t comment on how the series has developed.

In that programme White Dee certainly seemed to be the person who was able to provide advice and support. The only other person to be admired was the guy who went door to door selling items for 50p. From subsequent newspaper reports it would appear that he has been offered 2 jobs. Good for him!

It was irritating that Black Dee and another woman only tried (on camera) to find cleaning jobs when they were being threatened with eviction. If they could have done it then, why not before?

If the papers are to be believed, many of the scenes were set up or manipulated by the TV crew. A humdrum existence does not make ‘good viewing’. The families signed up believing it would show a close knit community, not a group of ‘scroungers’.

I agree in part with what has been said about people living on long term benefits having been helped into this position by previous governments and the the system. But...you can't blame the system for the way they act. If I suddenly found myself in their position I hope I would still have self respect, care about my appearance. I wouldn't take drugs or steal so that I could buy them nor would I use bad language in everyday conversation. There must be many, many people on long term benefits who still retain a decent way of living even if their standard of living has had to drop, they must feel that programmes like Benefit Street give all people on benefits a bad name.

The blame must lie with both the system AND the people. Some may say that they have never known any different but I don't think that is a good enough reason for them to not share the blame their circumstances.

Like Mersey but I only saw the trailers for the show and that was enough. I havent bothered to watch and like many decent folk I would lose me rag.
However I think the finger of shame and blame needs to be pointed at the TV company and producers that put this show out.
I am not 100% convinced this is a genuine street, i suspect its been well researched and editored and the producers have struck gold finding gulable morons with more time than sense on their hands to take part. The will be guilded to say what the producers want almost to script. before shows like this are made its takes at least 12 mths to prepare, the producers know that this show will be talked about after it is aired and send the viewing figures soaring which is what at the end of the day, its all about TV......sadly not about the people.

Thank god for Downton Abby ;-)

Have not watched any. But this was filmed over a period of some monthse, so tht of the final 'cut' has been done (as in most reality shows) to show people in not such a good light.

This is shameful, lazy programming put out to promote yet again those 'scroungers' on benefits). Just ideal for our Daily Mail readers to complain about.

I agree with others that the blame for the situation these families find themselves in is mainly down to government policies. The rot started with Margaret Thatcher and her Chancellor Geoffrey Howe wheb they decided that high unemployment was a price worth paying to bring inflation down.

Between 1980 and 1984 unemployment rose to nearly 3.3 million, the highest level since the 1930's, no doubt some of those 3.3 million were the parents of some of those in the programme.

Little was done by the Thatcher government to create jobs to bring down unemployment, they were more interested in promoting the finincail marhets, and the tactic that the Thatcher government used to massage the unemployment figures was to herd large numbers onto education courses and job schemes, sound familiar, this tactic has been adopted by governments of all persuasions ever since.

As a result of central and local government policies, ghettos of forgotten generations were allowed to develop in many areas. I note that much is being disclosed in the programme about the individuals, however, I think the programmers should be more balanced and fully disclose the tactics of all the governments and the policies that created the problems in the first place.

Rant Over :-D

HAHA
the street has been raided by the drug squad
6 have been charged :-D :-D

That's what I'd call a real 'reality' documentary. Real life stories.

I agree with OFITG. The ridiculous policies of Bonar Law and Lloyd George caused the Coal Strike and the Depression.

Families in Greenock and Bishop Auckland and Merthyr Tydfil were the victims of the Government failings after WW1. We can all pinpoint every problem in everybody's life in Britain to greedy mine owners and coming off the Gold Standard in 1928.

I havent watched it because it will infuriate me, everyone has choices in life n these people choose to live this way I feel for there children, one clip I seen the house was dug in, it costs nothing to clean up!