By Will Horwitz
Rich, famous, and jobless sounded awful – the worst kind of them-vs-us portrayal of poverty. When we were approached last year by the production company, asking if we’d help find unemployed people to feature, we turned them down. But the programme, shown over the last two days, has actually been quite impressive in illustrating some of the issues we come across every day.
In the first show the four ‘celebs’ (let’s be honest, we’d only ever heard of Larry Lamb), were given 4 days of Jobseekers Allowance (about £35), and told to find a job. In an incredibly artificial situation – followed by a camera and with only 4 days to work – they still learnt some important lessons. Not least the cruelty of the way wages are deducted from benefits, leaving people working for what seems like nothing. Neither of the two who found work were very keen to give back their ‘benefits’. They also realised quickly the difficulty of living on £65 a week, and the seemingly-small but almost insurmountable barriers that such low income presents – not being able to afford the bus fare to the interview, for example.
In last night’s show, they were packed off to various areas of the country to spend a few days living with people who were unemployed for a variety of reasons. It threw up some incongruous moments – Larry Lamb as marriage counsellor particularly stuck in my mind – but also some instructive lessons. The biggest of which is that each unemployed person, in their different ways, seemed to benefit hugely from a bit of personal attention from someone who cared. It wasn’t something they were getting at the Jobcentre.
The middle class elbows of one ‘celeb’ managed to get her host some work experience in a zoo (although where that’s leading is another matter). The dangerously severe approach of an Irish landscape gardener towards his hosts – a couple with 5 children living on benefits – betrayed his cringing lack of understanding of the barriers many people face, but even they seemed genuinely moved by his austere concern. And when Noel Gallagher’s ex-wife accompanied ex-offender Nick to the Jobcentre, she admitted their hostile approach towards him had almost turned her violent. No wonder Nick was struggling to find work, when that’s the kind of support he was getting.
At Community Links we have talked many times before about the importance of building meaningful relationships with individuals to really achieve change. These programmes illustrated well the two main problems with the benefits system. Its perverse financial disincentives to work in many situations, and the lack of personal support it provides to individuals for whom that could make all the difference. If these programmes have gone some way towards making that more obvious to the public, that can only be a good thing.
One point of concern – the way they seemed to leave the unemployed people they featured. The farewells were presented as emotional and final. I sincerely hope the television company wasn’t heartless enough to severely disrupt people’s lives for four days and then leave them high and dry.