Apologies that my first post in ages is a rant, but it is at least vaguely design related. If you want an insight into what the great and the good actually think of benefit claimants then you need look no further than the internal staff benefits document produced by advertising agency Iris.
Cunningly titled 'Iris on Benefits' (see what they did there?), it features such lovely stereotypes as a pregnant woman smoking, childcare down the pub and what are presumably teenage shoplifters. While my first temptation was to laugh (it's supposed to be a parody of that awful 'Shameless' programme, which isn't funny either), that Iris has won several lucrative government contracts (including campaigns for benefit changes and, good grief, the Olympics) tells us all we really need to know about how the 'upper classholes' - to borrow from the new series of The Thick of It' - view the most vulnerable members of society. So on reflection it's not just nasty, it's downright shameful.
5 comments:
I guess one question is I recognise from real life some of the stuff the agency mocked up. Too right them doing it comes across as smug, snobbish and arrogant, but then how/should that scial strata be portrayed?
There again benefit fraud and errors are estimated to cost c. £5.2bn p.a. of which £1.5bn is fraud and the rest errors
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/how-much-does-benefit-fraud-cost/3423
By contrast tax avoidance has been estimated to cost c.£70bn p.a.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/11/tax-avoidance-justice-network
Define 'that social strata' and, while you're at it, define 'benefits'. It's not actually called Iris on Benefit Cheats, and therein lies the difference.
I’m sure London ad agencies are swilling with people who got a foot in the door through unpaid internships, which would go some way to explaining why their idea of a benefit claimant resembles a Little Britain caricature and why they thought it would be such a chortlingly good wheeze to dress up as neds for the day. However, given they’ve also pocketed £2million of taxpayer money for a benefits ad campaign you’d have hoped at some point there might have been a little research done into the reality. In other words, they should know better. And if they don't, don't hire them.
This stuff matters, because it feeds into the narrative we’re being sold. As you rightly point out, benefit fraud is a drop in the ocean compared to tax avoidance. But with things like housing benefit, tax credits, childcare and disability allowance all being cut, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the other way round. If we swallow the idea that benefits = benefit cheats, thousands of hard working, lower to middle income families can relax safe in the knowledge that Call Me Dave and the Towel Folder are on it, stamping it out and making things better for the rest of us.
On the back of a lazily obvious pun, Iris are perpetuating the myth that when the Government talks about slashing benefits, they actually mean benefits for other [feckless Jeremy Kyle watching] people. With 80% of the cuts still to come, a lot of people are going to find out that’s not what they mean at all.
Define? The lumpenproletariat in a classical Marxist sense.
Yes you’re completely right when you refer to stuff like this feeding into the benefits = benefit cheats narrative we’re sold that is being actively used to legitimise and disguise what’s actually going on in terms of say the hack back in disability benefits. It’s also used to stigmatise the very notion of receiving benefits more generally.
But, by the same token, as with most caricatures, the reason Vikki Pollard struck a chord is because there’s a degree of truth in it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjdhEvosC3I
The failure of “liberals” to accept that also feeds into the narrative we’re being sold because it perpetuates a facile either/or debate. The question isn’t is there such a thing as chavs, neds etc., its why does government fixate on them given they’re a minority even by the government’s own deeply flawed statistics.
http://notthetreasuryview.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/government-continues-to-abuse-data-on.html
(this article illustrates the facile nature of “liberal” debate in a different way with methodological critique pointedly used to distract from rather than engage with let alone challenge the underlying issues)
My argument is rather than waste time debating, as say an Owen Jones might, whether there is such a thing as a chav and how many there are, accept they exist, leave the details to the social policy technocrats and move on to asking bigger questions including why tax evasion and avoidance aren’t getting more attention.
Define? The lumpenproletariat in a classical Marxist sense.
Yes you’re completely right when you refer to stuff like this feeding into the benefits = benefit cheats narrative we’re sold that is used to legitimise and disguise what’s actually going on in terms of say the hack back in disability benefits. It’s also used to stigmatise the very notion of receiving benefits more generally.
But, by the same token, as with most caricatures, the reason Vikki Pollard struck a chord is because there’s a degree of truth in it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjdhEvosC3I
The failure of “liberals” to accept that also feeds into the narrative we’re being sold because it perpetuates a facile either/or debate. The question isn’t is there such a thing as chavs, neds etc., its why does government fixate on them given they’re a minority even by the government’s own deeply flawed statistics.
http://notthetreasuryview.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/government-continues-to-abuse-data-on.html
(this article illustrates the facile nature of “liberal” debate in a different way with methodological critique pointedly used to distract from rather than engage with let alone challenge the underlying issues)
My argument is rather than waste time debating, as say an Owen Jones might, whether there is such a thing as a chav and how many there are, accept they exist, leave the details to the social policy technocrats and move on to asking bigger questions including why tax evasion and avoidance aren’t getting more attention.
Er, yes. This:
"...stuff like this feeding into the benefits = benefit cheats narrative we’re sold that is being actively used to legitimise and disguise what’s actually going on in terms of say the hack back in disability benefits. It’s also used to stigmatise the very notion of receiving benefits more generally"
So I guess we agree.
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