Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
The Benefit Street programme has raised the usual range of reactions.
Take your pick from “It’s all the fault of the Tories”, through “The work is there for people who can be bothered to look for it”, to “Cut off the gravy train. Work or starve, that’s the ticket.”
Personally I’ve had two immediate thoughts.
Selective editing?
The first is that, despite the programme apparently investigating a whole street’s worth of families, we actually get to see only a small handful.
Picked no doubt for their shock, pity, disgust value rather than because they are a typical cross-section.
What the rest are doing we are not told. Presumably uninterestingly doing the best they can for themselves and their families.
Maybe even actively seeking employment.
They’re not lazy
The second observation I make is that – please don’t laugh – these folk, whether featured or not, are not lazy.
Incapable, mentally, physically or emotionally perhaps. But not deliberately indolent. Rather, they are the result of one of the most valuable assets possessed by all humankind.
The ability to adapt
Using this ability – one possessed by man alone – humans have learned to live near the top of breathless mountains and so far below water levels that flooding of home and land is a frequent danger. From the frozen deserts of the north to the boiling desert of the tropics and from, the empty space above our planet to the depths of our oceans.
He is even learning – to a large extent has learned already – how to survive on freezing airless planets such as Mars and in the tepid clouds above boiling Venus.
And he has learned how to do so not as a matter of grim survival, but comfortably, adapting his clothing, his shelter and his diet to what is available.
So thoroughly indeed, he will resist mightily any attempt to remove him to some place that may on the face of it seem more amenable.
Happy with his lot
In short, to be happy with his lot in life. Whatever it may be. Thus the unemployed of Benefit Street.
With little or no prospect of work these folk have quickly learned to accept the possible and turn its back on the rest. To survive on an income that means going hungry is normal, suffering from lack of fuel and warm clothes in winter is normal, scrounging and petty shop-lifting and Foodbanks are normal.
So what if others drive posh cars, holiday in Spain, frequent night clubs and pubs, or expensive restaurants.
Are they any happier?
No, they tell themselves. And effortlessly believe. Who needs it? – I’ve got my mates and good neighbours and the kids are happy. I wouldn’t change places with anybody, they claim.
So to dismiss them as lazy is a cop-out. Given the chance to earn a few pounds by undertaking some onerous task they will set–to, with a will.
What they do seem to lack is the ability to stick at a task. To continue when they feel a bit tired, a bit bored.
Lack of stamina
That is because they lack the training everyday life has given the rest of us. The inbred acceptance that to live a fulfilled life, to provide for a family and hopefully have a bit left over for the pictures or a pint, getting up in the morning and sticking at a sometimes boring job is a staple of life.
After all, they swim in an environment where everybody mucks in, and nobody is allowed to starve, or freeze to death.
Or at least only slowly.
Tribal homeland
Thus the Benefit Streeters, sustained by manna from heaven, via the DHSS, have created their own tribal homeland. From which they will emerge only with the same profound reluctance as an Amazon tribe forced to recognise a world beyond its own.
To bring them out. Or more importantly, to bring their children out, into the same society as the rest of us, will be as difficult as convincing a blow-dart hunter he really should have a rifle. And trousers.
Clinging on regardless
Cut their benefit to the bone, render them homeless, do what we will, they will continue to cling on. And do so with a smile, an everyday courage exactly similar to the courage my parents showed with the bombs and rockets raining down.
An attitude of – “That’s life, so stop moaning and get on with it.”
An attitude that will not be dispelled before several more generations have passed on. And even then not entirely. I wish you all the luck in the world, Ian Duncan Smith. You’re going to need it.
