Brown backs ‘Jeremy Kyle’s Underclass Deathmatch’
In a move to get the feckless and the dressing-gowned off their sofas and into the 21st century economy, which offers so very many golden opportunities to the under-trained and under-educated, New Labour are seeking to recruit motivational speaker, Jeremy Kyle.
A man who has made his career from humiliating the lower classes and inciting them to violence is seen as the ideal choice for easing the unemployed back into indentured servitude. Jeremy Kyle’s Underclass Deathmatch will see carefully selected layabouts facing off in a number of disciplines. Hair-pulling, head-locking, and broken bottle brawls will be just some of the events to feature.
Speaking about Kyle’s chequered history as a talk show host, a government source said: ‘Of course the government deplores violence when it affects the deserving poor and people who vote in marginal constituencies. But surveys conducted amongst tabloid newspaper readers tell us that, in a controlled environment, it could be extremely useful in getting the unemployed active again, reducing jobless figures, and fostering vote-winning class hatred.’
The show will be shown on weekday mornings when real people are either at work or having a cup of tea with the nanny.
Posted on September 7th, 2008 at 1:28pm under Eye Catching Initiatives, New Labour
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• 9 Comments |
Will it be like Oprah………………… yummy?
Such is the hollowness of western values.
That is just the fucking limit.
Larry Teabag’s latest blog post… First they came for the dogs with tits
If only it were, Larry. If only it were.
ejh’s latest blog post… But not today the struggle
Jeremy Kyle – scrofulous slimeroach who enjoys orchestrating the pain of the inarticulate for the degraded viewer. This kind of gruntertainment should be called Jeremy Kyle’s Medieval Asylum Laughin, just to get the tenor right.
the series … would be used to highlight the role of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and explore how government policies can help people get jobs.
In which case it should, at least, be mercifully short.
Philip’s latest blog post… For Your Safety and Security
Extraordinary.
Private Eye have a piece in this issue on the rather poor performance of present government schemes for getting people off benefits.
” The DWP has been citing seemingly impressive figures for its Pathways To Work programme, aimed at getting the long-term sick off benefits and back into employment. A press release boasted: “A South Tyneside programme has been hailed a success after helping more than 3,800 long-term sick and disabled people into jobs.”
It did not reveal that the programme cost £9m. took 3 years and covers a huge area stretching to the Tees with around 66,000 people on benefits. Furthermore, the DWP has been forced to admit it has no idea how many of those 3,800 are still in work. It could only cite Policy Studies Institute research showing a 7.4% in the number of those on benefits subsequently employed in Pathways To Work areas, compared to other areas. Lots of money for for very small improvement. Not so impressive after all.”
If memory serves, people on Incapacity Benefit in pathways areas can return to work (which can be for just a few hours a week), but if they are unable to continue working through ill health, are able to return to benefits, at the level they previously received them, with no adverse effects for up to a year after starting work. So some of the people classed as returning to work may well have got jobs – for a few weeks or months, but could also be classed as claimants in other figures.
Is any Labour policy assessed and evaluated? (stupid, rhetorical question.)
But using Kyle…..? Jeeeeezus.
Ye gods…that’s insane. I can imagine how it will go: live ‘interventions’ where some long-term claimant is bullied by ‘friends’ and family in front of a baying live TV audience (haven’t they got jobs to go to themselves?), egged on by Kyle. Alternatively, they could just commission ITV to do an action series with Ross Kemp about taking out the dole cheats, one scrounger at a time. Or Caroline Flint could team up with Purnell in a Work and Pensions-sponsored remake of Dempsey and Makepeace set in a job centre (if you prefer more homoerotic subtext, John Hutton’s in talks to team up with Liam Byrne in a ‘revisioned’ version of The Professionals, funded by the CBI and Home Office Immigration Dept.).
I’ll play devil’s advocate, so no personal flames, please.
1. Jeremy Kyle provides space for debate about social issues between people who have been badly educated. People who are sneared at by so-called liberals, generically accused of inarticulacy (clearly disproven by some participants in the programme) and who are judged without consideration. Left wing critics act like ignorant Tories, pretending that people from disfunctional or non-existent families can pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
2. The Kyle show is a mirror of lower class/underclass society. What you see are past failures of social policy. You should treat the Kyle show as an education lesson about what has gone wrong and needs to be corrected.
3. Kyle and his ilk will have had their day when government social policy succeeds. Kyle can only exist in the presesence of a badly educated underclass.
4. If Kyle has 1.7 million viewers, surely that qualifies him to ask “why don’t you get off your bum and do something useful, so that I can do the same thing”?