The Times They Are A Changin Part 3

The Great Unwashed

I was working from home yesterday. I know what you’re thinking. But, normally when I say that I am working from home, I am doing exactly that. At home. Working. It is not a euphemism that I use for “skiving”. However, I must admit that yesterday I was far from stretched. This was due, in no small part, to the fact that I am “between jobs” and “looking for a new challenge”.

In any case, I was less than busy, and while I was waiting for my new iPOD to import the first 1590 tracks (only about a million to go!) from my ridiculously extensive CD collection, I allowed myself to be distracted by daytime TV. How depressing.

The morning news, on each of the main terrestrial channels, is clearly dumbed down and designed for viewers with the attention span of a goldfish with Alzheimers. Watch it for even half an hour and you will see the same stories repeated three or four times. This is presumably because it is aimed at people who are in a hurry. People rushing to get out of the house to get to work. Parents attempting to get the kids off to school.

But as soon as the news finishes, it starts. Daytime TV. Sponsored by Ambulance Chasers Inc., How To Sue Plc., Something For Nothing Money Lenders Ltd, and, Fast Food Is Good For You, Honest……It would seem that the TV schedulers have worked out that the great unwashed, the unemployed, the social scroungers, all get up around 9.15am. Or maybe, this is when their metabolism wakes them, craving more alcohol, or a quick fix…..

Harsh? Maybe. Maybe not. Just look at the programmes that are on and look at the people who are on them. It starts with the Jeremy Kyle Show. When that is finished you can turn over for a spot of Trisha. The Ricki Lake Show, Sally Jessy Raphael, Judge Judy, Wife Swap, Wife Swap USA, etc., etc. It is endless. They are back to back and repeated throughout the day on the freeview channels. But, worst/best of all are the home-grown shows of Trisha and Jeremy Kyle. Trailer trash TV British style.

While all of the nice retired people and “ladies who lunch” are watching nice middle-class programmes such as Good Morning, Plastic Surgery Makeover, Loose Women and Relocate To An Even Better Place In The Sun, the great unwashed are learning their life lessons from Jeremy Kyle and Trisha. Every show is the same. Some emaciated, alcoholic, stoned, shaven-haired waster in a shell suit with a pierced eyebrow is trying to justify why he is beating his current pregnant-again pramface girlfriend. The girlfriend is obese and foul-mouthed and is beating him back. There is always a twist like they are actually brother and sister or something. Or, the bloke is a woman and therefore adamant that the child cannot be his/hers. Drug tests, boot camps and lie detectors are in abundance.

These are people who have no jobs. Unemployable. People who choose not to work. Why should they? They “earn” far more from benefits than they ever could in paid employment. They sit on their arses all day and they spend their evenings apparently copulating with friends, family, and people they have met in chat rooms or on jail visits. They leave a trail of unwanted and unpaid-for kids. All their money goes on booze, drugs, and plasma screen TVs. They care for themselves and no-one else.

No wonder the findings of the Office for National Statistics, out yesterday, were so depressing. A quarter of children in Britain now live with just one parent; typically single mothers. And, they don’t know when to stop. They are at it like rabbits. The number of lone mums bringing up three or more children has trebled since the 1970s. “Bringing up”?

We now have the lowest number of marriages since records began and two in three marriages end in divorce. Society is falling apart. We don’t have so much of a self-help culture as a help yourself to someone else’s one. A “sod you” view of the world. A world without a sense of place; of belonging; of community. Only 29% of British people now believe that “most people are trustworthy”. In the last 20 years there has been a five-fold increase in complaints about neighbours.

Jeremy Kyle has got a job for life!

Next time I’m at home all day and less than industrious I think I’ll listen to Radio 4, or, Radio 5…………..