Poor people with TVs and tattoos inspire more anger than MPs with duck houses and moats. But in Westminster the perks of the job, often termed 'benefits', are funded by the taxpayer
Whenever the debate about social security rages, so do the commenters harping on about how everyone in their street has a "massive fucking telly" – the implication being that they claim benefits, ergo, the complainants' taxes paid for their plasma screen.
Then we have Edwina Currie, claiming poor people are only poor because they have tattoos. I expect to see David Beckham and Angelina Jolie at the front of a food bank queue at any moment, glumly ruing the day they spent so much of their money on body art, a slippery slope that led them straight into financial despair.
Perks of a job are often termed "benefits". When I worked at a supermarket a few years ago, staff received a handbook of benefits that came with the job. A few quid off your phone contract, a free driving lesson with a certain company, 10% staff discount at the shop. Implying that subsistence payments for people who are out of work, sick, disabled or on low incomes are a perk is to play straight into the hands of the wrong side of the debate.
But Social Security Street (to call it by its proper name), despite the neat alliteration, wouldn't have packed the same punch for Love Productions, the company responsible for the horror show Benefits Street for Channel 4.
Other jobs that come with generous benefit packages include being paid £300 for clocking in and sneaking out again, courtesy of the House of Lords. It's like signing on, but the pay is better and there's less intrusion into your personal life. Replace the Jobcentre Plus staff with a couple of braying Hooray Henrys slapping you on the back for your latest media gaffe, and you've got the picture.
Perks for MPs include turning up to work for a few minutes to let everyone know you're there, then sloping off to the in-house bar, returning only for a named vote so it looks as if you were there all along.
Imagine if our doctors turned up in the morning, said hello to receptionists, saw a patient or two, and then went down the pub for the rest of the day. If any of the rest of us behaved that way we would be out of a job and possibly receiving the "benefit" of £71 a week on income support. But not those MPs on a base salary of £66,396 a year, with all the time in the world to moonlight as bank consultants on the side.
Shrieks about "where my taxes go" are often predictably accompanied by tales of television sets, multiple children, mobile phones – and scarcely a brief murmur about the duck houses, the moat clearances, the family and friends employed on eyebrow-raising salaries in MPs' offices. Woe betide the person with a dog who has to use a food bank to see them through a brief period of crisis, but who cares about the elected officials using taxpayers' money on soft furnishings and boozy late nights?
To avoid any further confusion in the social security and entitlement debate, perhaps someone could draw up an official list of "things poor people are allowed to have". According to Edwina and co, dogs, tattoos, mobile phones, televisions and children under 18 sleeping in separate bedrooms are a definite no – although from bitter experience some of them are harder to sell on than others when the chips are down. Where do they stand on paracetamol? Goldfish? Razors? Teabags? Sanitary towels? £12,000 self-portraits?
There is a Benefits Street in Britain. It isn't in Birmingham. It's in Westminster. But in the attempt to make such bravely controversial television it was clearly overlooked. Go on Love, it would be riveting. I've got my popcorn and swearwords waiting.