Sounds ghastly, but the delightful (and rather smart) Evan Davies makes it both engrossing and informative.
But it's the participants who are so compelling -- their sense of entitlement and self-pity, smeared around in equal measure; their mouthing of platitudes about how they'd be willing to do any job, followed by the appalling litany of excuses and justifications they then wheel out; their delusional attacks on immigrants when it is they, themselves, that are the problem.
The warmest person in the documentary was the Indian owner of a restaurant, a man of near-infinite patience and generosity; but my heart also went out to the teenager who was so inept he was unable to tie his own tie (but at least he turned up and tried: the other three assigned to the same workplace just didn't bother).
The pair who annoyed me most were given work in a potato factory, but couldn't pack the right number of bags in each box and then expressed outrage that they were being singled out for a telling-off (done in the nicest manner possible) when there was a foreigner in their team -- who, presumably, they felt was to blame.
They then spent their time telling all their (immigrant) co-workers how unfair it was that they were in this country, "taking jobs from English people", while complaining that the production line had been deliberately speeded-up just to confound them (it had been slowed down, to help them).
Wisbech, where the documentary was filmed, is in my part of the world (Evan was seen catching an InterCity 225 from London, but isolated Wisbech -- "the capital of The Fens" -- hasn't been on the rail network for around forty years). This bleak little market town is typical of so many places in England, and much more typical of the country as a whole, I'm afraid to say, than the Metropolitan melting-pot in which I live.
Fascinating viewing, and a damning indictment of the dependency culture we've created where people see nothing wrong in sponging off the benefits system (ie, off the rest of us) rather than getting off their arses.
Especially since at least two of them could have made a very good living as gay escorts. They just have to put their minds to it!
6 comments:
It's a sobering reflection on 65 years of "rights" and the "welfare state", is it not? Your candidates for escort work were indeed promising but it's tragic that they're not equipped for anything more fulfilling.
Is there anything that's NOT depressing about jolly old England anymore?
Well actually, Cornishware - that wasn't depressing at all. quite uplifting, in fact.
And tea at Brown's Hotel.
And the Soane Museum.
Er... no, am running out of ideas now.
In the early '70s I worked with Eastern Counties, the region's National Bus Company subsidiary. We had a Depot in Wisbech which functioned quite well except during the Strawberry season, when the operating staff did a second job (picking strawberries) and so couldn't or wouldn't do overtime to cover all the scheduled bus journeys.
How things have changed in the last 40 years - from 2 jobs to no jobs. I'm now 70 and still working when the opportunity arises and paying tax to support these shiftless spongers.
Unfortunately you knew what the outcome was going to be before the programme even started - and I watched it 'live'.
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