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A documentary about benefits makes Gary Day uncomfortable. Thank goodness for Timothy Spall.
The Statute of Artificers (1536) required the able-bodied to accept whatever work was offered them. Our attitude to the poor changes little over the ages. It's their fault they have no jobs, so why should we pay to support them? Ready-made ideas save us the trouble of thinking. And if you repeat them often enough, they appear true. If they start to go a bit stale, jazz them up. Restate them. Be controversial. That seems to be the thinking behind Channel Four's new three-part series Benefit Busters (Thursday 20 August, 9pm). Billed as a documentary, the programme played as propaganda. "Britain is now paying out more in benefits than it receives in income tax," announced the narrator.
Now why is that, you wonder? Could it be anything to do with recession? No, it's because people like Dawn, a single mother, can't be bothered to switch off Trisha and get out there. That, at any rate, is the view of Hayley Taylor, who runs a confidence-boosting course designed to get such women back into work. "Why aren't you queuing up at McDonald's?" she asks her group. "They've always got vacancies."
Hayley is part...