Watching Benefit Street, the most interesting episode by far was when it briefly dispensed with the ‘look! Look at the chavs!! With their tracky bottoms and their Special Brew! Look at Them!!!” shtick, and concentrated on the immigrants
A lot of peoples impression of immigrants is informed entirely by the UKIP/Daily Mail line on benefits tourists, scroungers, and criminals line. The benefits Street episode showed the reality to be somewhat different. That the immigrants were being exploited, demonised and generally treated like shit by everyone. And far from fancying lying about on benefits,while mocking taxpayers, all they seemed to want to do was work. Which is more than can be said for a lot of the indigenous population.
There is some hope that they might take a similar tack. In which case the people who tune in specifically to boom at the telly with their lofty indignation/racism might actually bloody learn something about reality, rather than prejudice and misinformation peddled by the outrage-mongers
But then again….
