Wonderful moment for Evan Davies on R4’s Today programme this morning. They’d found him a deserving poor person to pour scorn on the government’s plans to cap benefit payments to large families.
Or so they thought. But it all went a bit wrong.
The poor are always with us
It is axiomatic at the BBC the poor are downtrodden, oppressed, aching to be liberated by their betters, etc. etc; and that the women in particular are all moneyless versions of Lady Toynbee.
Alas, the interviewee proved to be neither.
Eileen McCoy, a robust and articulate Catholic mother of ten, wasted no time in informing Evan that her construction-worker husband had been priced out of his job by immigrants; and that the council had given all the large houses to the ethnic minorities.
And she blamed the previous government! Way off-message!
Nurse! Nurse!
You could hear Evan almost fainting with horror as he tried to move the discussion on.
Hmm! People always say how it is for them. The problems come when badly informed journalists try to extrapolate on behalf of everyone else. It is very simple. If the lowest paid received a living wage (that has been calculated) rather than a minimum wage, there would be no need for the taxpayer to subsidise businesses through the benefits system eg working tax credit. This measure was designed to encourage employers to take on more people. All it has done has increased the gap between the best and lowest paid in many companies by a factor of 200 when thirty years ago it used to be a factor of 30. Perhaps it is time to ask the Vatican to contribute to those cases where families have taken up the edict go forth and multiply with great enthusiasm only to find themselves subsequently in difficulties.