Author: birminghamreview

By Ed King

Your name is wrong. In fact, it’s your biggest problem.

I watched your first episode on Sunday morning, as a 1am repeat, and kept asking the screen “what does this have to do with benefits?” Yes there was a young couple under investigation for benefit fraud, and the subject of rescinded claims was a constant, not prevalent, thread; but the programme I watched was about the lives of selected James Turner Street residents. Selected. And benefits, or rather the see saw relationship people have with the welfare state, was only part of their story. And a small part; a divisive framing technique at best.

Sitting here, after a sleep, breakfast and lunch, the things I remember are Black Dee’s agitation at the threat of eviction. White Dee’s maternal umbrella to the constant cracks around her. Danny’s foolish self destruction, Fungi’s demons, and Smoggy’s guarded admission of “trying to a think of a better way to do things, a better way to make money” and not returning to the “doing something silly” that locked him up in the first place. It’s the smoking, the grind, the conversations on porch steps; the battle for small victories and keeping a daily wolf from a door. And one moment when Danny and Fungi were trying to work out how long they have until Giro Day (as I used to call it) with the clandestine calculations of food, drink and drugs running through their minds, that made me laugh hard at myself. For that section at least, your name could have been Strensham Road – or no doubt countless of others.

And on the plus side, for there were a few to be lauded, I was fascinated by the candid participation of the subjects involved. The production team responsible for finding, engaging and filming the people featured in your first programme deserve a loud applause. However it happened, and I’m aware of the claims of bribery and coercion (which could be buying someone cigarettes blown way out of proportion), those that worked literally on the street to build the programme’s content must have done so with vigour. For anyone to get anyone to open up on camera, requires skill – but to garner such personal rolling content you’ll need empathy in there somewhere.

Had we been left to watch it in peace, and if the subsequent programmes deliver the same level of frank involvement, you may well have been on your way to a very public honour. From being allowed to film the insides of a marijuana grow to the colloquial preparation of a shoplifting endevour, alongside the seemingly default openness about individual’s lives, it was an exceptionally public look into the very, very personal. You just pitched it wrong.

So last Monday saw your debut and tonight sees your follow up, after seven days of public indignation, accusation, debate, and real news stories once again playing second fiddle to A TV PROGRAMME.

Although the actual subject of consternation received comparatively little intelligent discussion; and if, as your moniker suggests, your intention was to examine the lives of people living on welfare, and to engage, or even educate, a general public about the fiscal and emotional realities of surviving on state subsidies – you failed. You hooked this onto obvious characters with obvious problems, encouraging an even more obvious response and terms like ‘Poverty Porn’.

(Although there have been some saner responses, even on a very local level. Ozzy Styles brings some pertinent facts & figures into his personal reaction on our own Opinions page, plus Graeme Brown’s Birmingham Post article is worth a read – and not only for the line about Marketing Birmingham. For further discussions on benefits, from one side at least, also check out Sue Marsh’s blog – Diary of a Benefit Scrounger)

But the public have spoken, the country is ‘outraged’, and your hands are being widely slapped so we can all feel good about living in Moseley or not buying a Big Issue. And it is with baited breath that I shall watch your second outing tonight, alongside a confidently high audience; although to aid with my objective enjoyment I’m giving you a nickname.

To me, you will now just be called ‘The Street’, with the misguided prefix being forgotten like a precocious teenager. And I’ll forgive too, on one condition; Immigration Street never, repeat NEVER, comes to air.

Ed King is editor of Birmingham Review: https://twitter.com/edking2210

Benefit Street (2/5) is broadcast tonight on Channel 4, from 9pm to 10pm

By Ozzy Styles

My name is Ozzy Stylez and I am one of Birmingham’s many, many “benefits scroungers”, the likes of which you have no doubt seen or heard about on Channel 4’s hot new documentary Benefits Street.

I had hoped to appear on the documentary myself, as I have always harboured ambitions of fame and notoriety. Unfortunately I didn’t quite match the criteria that the documentary makers behind the controversial new series were looking for.

For starters my teeth are in pretty good condition (according to a dental nurse I know) and my skin has yet to take on a pallid, leathery appearance. This is most likely down to my infrequent drink and drug use. I also don’t own a tracksuit, and the clothes that I do wear –  usually a pair of smart fitted jeans and a warm jumper (or flattering shirts in the summer months) – are frequently washed and occasionally ironed.

Perhaps I could change my ways a little to be considered for the second series, but I can’t afford a new sport themed wardrobe, nor can I afford to start smoking or drinking frequently. It is a shame, but that is the reality of life on £71.50 a week. I actually used to live in the Winson Green area of Birmingham where Benefits Street is set, but unfortunately for my hopes of appearing on the show, I was gainfully employed at the time.

I suppose that I do live an enviable existence though, one that would make many of this nation’s employed green with jealousy. I wake up when I want and usually start the day by casually sliding my laptop across the duvet and searching the job market at my leisure, applying for anything that I am suited to. Unfortunately there are about 51,105 others in my position chasing only 6,949 jobs in the Birmingham area (according to last February’s TUC figures) so I frequently come up against dead ends and rejections.

This can be a fairly demoralising way to begin a day, so after a few hours I get up, wash and dress, feed myself and then begin to think about the evening meal that I will cook for my partner when she returns from her job. Because she is in work and living with me, I am not entitled to housing benefit. This puts extra strain on our relationship as she can’t afford to pay my half of the rent on her meagre salary, despite what the government might expect her to do. When money is tight couples argue more, no matter how much they love each other.

At one point during the opening program in this new documentary series, a rather menacing sounding weed farmer dressed up like Heisenberg from Breaking Bad claims that “Basically everyone does something on the side when they’re on benefits, it can be from selling tobacco [to] going shoplifting.” He has a point; my sideline is creative writing and playing music in a band. I suppose that I always saw myself as an entertainer, and I use some of the long hours in my frequently tedious unemployed days to pursue artistic endeavours that I didn’t always have time for when I was at work. Rather than waste time being bored I try as best as I can to realise the dreams I have always held in my heart.

However, my attempts to entertain, document and explore the world I live in through artistic means of expression have been somewhat trivialised by the current government, and the cuts to arts funding announced by Chancellor George Osbourne last July were a kick in the teeth to me and others like me. The chances of me being able to earn a living doing the things I am good at and enjoy are getting slimmer.

Instead I am expected to fight against 7 ½ other people for each of the jobs on the market in my area. There is no guarantee that I will actually enjoy any of these roles either. But it is my duty to slave away at whatever scraps are thrown at my feet, ignoring the dreams that I have had since I was a boy, to join this grim rat race so that I can bare my teeth to the legions of Daily Mail readers looking down at me with disgust and seethe, “I have worth, I contribute to society.”

I found myself in this situation because I was made redundant. I was not fired for gross misconduct, I wasn’t sniffing aerosols at work and I wasn’t slacking off. I didn’t get bored of going to work, but rather enjoyed my job and had made good friends with many of my colleagues. I tried to do my job to the best of my ability, but the company that I worked for was a small business that was struggling to stay afloat in an extremely difficult economic climate.

It is my opinion that our nation is not being bankrupted by a culture of ‘benefit scroungers’ despite what the government and incendiary documentary makers might have us believe. If Channel 4 really wanted to make a documentary that got to the heart of this country’s financial woes, then they should have considered the activities of the heads of some of the UK’s biggest grossing corporations, namely those who use off-shore bank accounts to avoid losing a few of their many millions to pesky taxation. After all, only 0.7% of social security payments are lost to fraudulent claimants (and yes, two of these claimants live on James Turner Street and appeared on Benefits Street). However, whilst this accounts for about £1.2 billion, this shortfall is made up for in the £16 billion of benefits that go unclaimed each year.

These figures are in turn dwarfed by the £25 billion lost to wealthy tax dodgers who choose not to bare their teeth to the nation and say “I contribute to society” and keep all the money they should pay in tax for themselves. Channel 4 might need some convincing to make a documentary about these people, who seem like normal God-fearing folk on the surface. It would certainly be less of a freak show and make for less invigorating TV. It was telling that Benefits Street (itself a tasteless play on the phrase ‘benefits cheat’) was immediately followed by another jaw dropping, eyeball popping documentary about men who like to dress up as dolls and take pictures of themselves.

I am pretty sure that if the Inland Revenue were to be given guns, black SAS style uniforms and sunglasses, and a documentary team followed them around the country as they kicked in the doors to the offices of wealthy business owners banking off shore to avoid paying tax, then they would see a similar reaction to the one they got in the first episode of Benefits Street when they followed petty shoplifter Danny as he tried to break his ASBO and push past police to return to the Bullring for a ‘meeting’.

They would no doubt capture on film a reaction of initial self righteousness, followed by anger as the situation escalated in seriousness, followed by full on gnashing of teeth and spitting as the highly motivated and violent Inland Revenue SWAT team smashed his face into his solid oak desk with the butt of their semi-automatic weapons, bent him over double to put the handcuffs on him and read him his rights.

The truth of the matter is that when an animal is cornered it will fight for its life, no matter how much money it’s earning. And I know a lot of people that would happily pay the price of a TV licence to watch that program alone.

_______

Little is known about Ozzy Stylez.

Those that have tried to find out more about him have met with a series of increasingly more mysterious accidents. What we do know is that he resides in the middle bit of England and could be at your next event, quietly judging you over a White Russian with two different coloured straws and an umbrella in it.

Questions and comments can be sent, at the individual’s own risk, to ozzystylez2@hotmail.com