Welfare Straits

You don't have to be listening to R4 BBC Today prog for long to hear some whiny representative of a Left wing pressure group bemoaning the poverty of the masses and it is usually a few seconds after you have turned it on as the BBC is one long pitch for more government intervention and it has a rolling programme of figures it wheels on from the ever growing burgeoning Poverty Industry with their State wishlists and dodgy statistics and false analysis of the issues. In fact the BBC sees its remit as a public service broadcaster not to keep a beady eye on State depradations and empire building but rather the complete opposite - as the gatekeeper in-chief holding government's feet to the fire to ensure that they are expanding State operations into every nook and cranny of our lives and to make sure that they are not back sliding on their job to snoop regulate tax and meddle us all to death in the name of the Public Good of course.

Such indeed it proved to be this morning as the first item under discussion was someone from the Joseph Roundtree organisation bewailing the poverty of the Working Classes ie those who are working and claiming benefits. Here we must pause to give Gordon Brown his due in successfully roping in half the country to the welfare trap couched characteristically and euphemistically as 'Tax Credits' (wonder who thought that one up) as all government expansion programmes must  perforce be disguised in Orwellian speak. The representative gave the usual sob story about people trapped in low wages and gave a number of reasons for the cause, all erroneous of course but the overwhelming picture she painted was or should be deeply insulting, not to say deeply condescending to all those in question because she painted a picture of helpless individuals with no free will, predetermined to remain in their condition,with no autonomy,no motivation to self advancement,helpless hapless  ciphers of circumstances beyond their control, pawns in some giant capitalist conspiracy to do them down and whose only salvation was for the State to come and ride in on a great white charger and save them all from themselves and their foredoomed static existence as prole feed for the cruel, unfeeling capitalist bosses who are deliberately blighting their existence with low pay and job insecurity.

Could the root of all this lefty wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes on at  the BBC be  down to nothing more than guilt - guilt that as employees of this vast monolithic State broadcaster they are far far removed and immune from the vicissitudes of the market place where the Insecuriat dwell( ie the Real World) as they receive their monies from the licence payers at the point of a gun and know not what it is like to work in a semi free market where they might have to, perish the thought, actually compete for their positions and  produce something of objective worth pertaining to reality rather than being brave reporters on the frontiers of Socialist La La Land?