I've just scanned the telly channels. I'm off work on today and can't believe the amount of telly in the morning is made up of propaganda directed at those who are at home at this time. It is clever Tory stuff. Hats off to them for using their creativity, money and power in a way that not only keeps their classes interests to the fore, but pushes them ahead in the class war they are waging.
All of the programmes I have watched seem to be aimed at two demographics. Those who are at home who vote and those who are at home because they are out if work.
The constant stream of hapless poor people and scrounging poor people and lazy poor people must make the retired or the stay at home parent think they are under seige.
Millionaire Chancellor George Osborne has talked about the shirkers with the "curtains drawn," still in bed. He says the strivers are working or at least filling every minute of every day filling in application forms and using their food money to phone prospective employers, who, of course, have got hundreds of vacancies waiting for those who get on their bicycle and go looking.
The Tory PR machine is in overdrive. A TV programme "Saints and Scroungers" pumped out by the BBC at this time in the morning - a time when if course scroungers won't see it as they will be fast asleep cuddling their White Lightening bottle, shows us deserving and undeserving poor.
Those at home at this time of the morning must be ready to punch their neighbours, because they know how hard they work to try to get work. They know how hard they work or have worked for their families while these lazy fuckers strip the tax pot with welfare claim after welfare claim for their laminate flooring and 40"tellies.
The middle class retired or "housewife," "househusband," full time mum or dad or those working from home know they are not shirking, and it must be that person across the way, who smokes, whistles and seems to get by easily without work. The person across the way knows it is the person across the way who she sees in the post office cashing a disability cheque even though she knows he works in McDonalds.
The stereotypes acerbated by the tabloid press. I know, because I hear the editorial and the examples made by Jeremy Kyle and the other propaganda programmes quoted at me by stay at home mums and retired family members. Not one of those who quote these things at me know a real life example.
Neighbours pitted against neighbours. Working class people of differing incomes and needs pitted against each other rather than fighting with each other.
And guess what? The myth the BBC, ITV, Sky etc are pumping out of the huge swathe of broken Britains- lazy and scrounging drainers of state money- flamboyant druggie drunk wasters of your hard earned taxes- are just that... A myth.
Research - lots of it carried out here in Scotland- has shown what we all really know to be the case, yet because of the obfuscations of our City of London friendly media, find hard to escape the propaganda myth.
There are not enough jobs for everyone, nor has there been for many, many years.
Even during the so called Blair and Thatcher "boom" times the boom was only for those profiting out of the creation of economic bubbles- the working class had their jobs taken from them and replaced by fewer low paid, unprotected jobs.
The person across the road may well be giving in to hopelessness as the thirtieth application form this month is dropped into the post box. The young mother may well need benefits to boost her low paid unstable job. The person suffering from isolation, depression and victimization by our middle class, City of London based, curtain twitching media may well take time out of the drudge, grey rejections with the legal, cheap bottle of chemically brewed cider.
But one thing you can definitely be sure of. The miniscule - and it is indeed miniscule- amount of benefit fraud will be highlighted as what is breaking Britain, while the hundreds of billions of pounds of tax avoidance and fraud by the rich; the continuing robbery of our tax money by the banks and their Tory pushers and the selling off of our services to companies determined to make more billions out of the creation of yet another capitalist bubble that will inevitably burst and impoverish the working and poor, will never have a morning TV programme made with a mockney, faux working class voice doorstepping their gilt, lacquered Kensington fifth home.
So why don't you switch of your television set and go and do something less boring instead? Like lobby your local Lib Dem and Tory Constituency office and let them know you are not fooled by the culture of blame and their dressing up of plain thievery as "essential austerity measures." Ask them how many jobs have been created since they came into power? Ask them why the debt has nearly doubled since they took it on with their poor baiting poverty creating policies? Ask them why food banks are growing and growing? Ask them how many people have been made homeless and how many more will be made homeless by their bedroom tax and why people with second third and forth homes are not targeted with this tax- why only the poor?
"Blow up the TV
Blow up the car
Without these things
You don't know where you are
Sell all the magazines
Pull down the abattoirs
And all that's obscene."
Toyah Wilcox, I Want to be Free.