Evidence-free yelling; arguments based in emotion, not fact. I'm not talking about Channel 4's Benefits Street debate which I appeared on Monday night, as predictably disorderly as it was. I mean the whole so-called debate about social security that this country has endured since the financial sector plunged Britain - and much of the world - into economic disaster.
The Government and much of the media have fed us a relentless, poisonous diet of “skivers” and “'scroungers”, of the feckless and workshy hiding behind blinds, subsidised by you, the hard-working taxpayer, who have to get up in the morning and slog your guts out. It was the behaviour of those at the top of society which led to a surge in unemployment and underemployment, the longest fall in living standards since the Victorian era, and hundreds of thousands driven to food banks in one of the richest countries on earth. But it is the behaviour of those at the bottom of society that has been scrutinised, poked, criticised, and demonised ever since.
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