I'm busy doing nothing

Am having a slightly extended Easter break even though kids are back - was supposed to be working today, but then had to be off tomorrow - tiresome domestic / medical stuff - so decided to make a weekend of it.

Which means I am free to write a blog at 4:15 in the afternoon, even if it's just a quick one.

I was delighted that the Trussell Trust exceeded its normal take by a couple of orders of magnitude, due to the reaction of right-thinking individuals to the Mail on Sunday's tricks (see last blog). So at least something good came of it.

And maintaining an Easter theme (very loosely) I was astonished by the BBC's Rev show last night. Really beautifully done - emotional and spiritual almost, though with plenty of comedy. Check it out.

I suppose there are lots of good comedies that have a semi-tragic element behind them. I don't just mean the biopic- friendly stuff on Tony Hancock or Kenneth Williams. It's simply that for us to relate to a character there usually needs to be something appealing about them; something human. It's why The Office really works because of Tim and Dawn (the painting set etc) and not because of David Brent.

Elsewhere, I'm not writing about football, other than to lodge my indignation that the first nine minutes of the BBC news at lunchtime was about David Moyes. Orwell had something to say about the proles, football and the lottery - uncomfortably close to the bone these days.

So, that's it. Despite being a Gentleman of Leisure today I have other stuff to do. Not least I have to figure out some more French in advance of a Voxcetera rehearsal tonight.

P.S. Break a leg to all those involved with Sweeney Todd tonight. I am going on Friday, and may I suspect need some time off pies thereafter.

Benefits Street

I ran out of time to blog yesterday. Work is pretty full on at the moment (always in fact). Then, by the time I took boy 2 swimming, and went to the gym, and had a bath, the time had gone.

At least my busy evening means I don’t need an excuse for not watching Benefits Street. Not that watching a programme is a prerequisite to criticising it – remember the outrage over Brass Eye? So, either the people in this programme are scum abusing the benefits system, or people struggling to make ends meet, having been let down by education and the post-industrial UK. Apparently. I’m guessing it falls into the 99% of life that is ‘much more complicated than that’.

I am acutely aware that I had a very safe and supportive environment in which to grow up. I had parents who were generally there, fed me, provided (both buying and through the library) all the books I could want, and encouraged me to ask questions and find things out.

I went to the local comprehensive, but it wasn’t exactly St Stabby’s Academy for the Criminally Deranged. Yes, there were kids with issues but not so many as to disrupt learning (though they got close in Mrs Fisher’s English lessons). And kids who wanted to learn may have had some name-calling on (rare) occasions, but were left to get on with it.

And I was in the last year which had no university student loans at all. My education was provided free to me (grant and parental contribution). Have I paid that back in extra tax since? Definitely. Did I take it for granted at the time? Sure did. But I am now aware of what a huge privilege that was.

My (admittedly somewhat rambling) point though is that the world I grew up in gives me no valid frame of reference from which to analyse Benefits Street. And that is likely to be the same for most of us. The world of the cheat and the world of the struggler are equally far from me. And I don’t really want the television to tell me how to feel about them. (Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe got this spot on – as usual). It’s the equivalent of the Two Minutes’ Hate.

What with government spin, surveillance, prolefeed, and the Lottery, Orwell seems ever closer. Though in my darker moments I do wonder whether his should be congratulated for his prescience, or seen as the writer of the instruction manual that everyone since has copied.