These scrounging deadbeats on TV’s Benefits Street

Every day, at about noon, he saunters to the local pub, where he remains for the rest of the afternoon, now and then popping outside for a smoke, pint in hand, and in between drinks nipping over the road to the bookies to put his bets on.

He eventually meanders home at about the time when most people are leaving work, and then a couple of hours later he’s to be seen returning to the pub, where he stays until closing time.

It’s a leisurely routine, entirely uninterrupted by work, which he hasn’t done in years, despite being in his mid-40s and apparently fit enough.

The only hiccup occurs when he periodically has to turn up at the benefits office, presumably to satisfy himself that you and I are going to continue paying for his beer, fags and bets.

I’m sure that there are many other areas of Yorkshire, and beyond, which have somebody just like him, objects of wonder and irritation to those who work, or have worked all their lives, who ask themselves how he gets away with it?

That’s a question that must cross the minds of most of the five million or so people who have been glued to the remarkable documentary series, Benefits Street, on Channel 4, the penultimate instalment of which was shown last night.

The programme has divided opinion. Its portrayal of a rubbish-strewn street in Birmingham where many, perhaps most, of the residents exist on benefits has been condemned in some quarters as exploitative of the poor, and not an accurate picture of life there.

Indeed, there have been hundreds of complaints to the television watchdog Ofcom, which will only pass judgement once the series is over. Both Channel 4 and the production company that made the programme have been robust in their assertion that it is fair and accurate.

Whatever the outcome of the Ofcom inquiry, the viewing figures – which are very high for a documentary and some of the best for Channel 4 in recent times – demonstrate that the series has struck a chord with the public.

What can’t be argued is that the programme has, either by design or an extraordinary stroke of luck, found in one neighbourhood a collection of spectacularly unappealing characters who are workshy, feckless or worse that crystallise widespread public concern over what the benefits system is there for, and how it works.

The human gargoyles of Benefits Street aren’t working people fallen on hard times, but people who have no desire to work or intention of doing so. They bleat about “The Social” that keeps them, while contributing nothing to the public purse that pays it.

Exploitative? No, I don’t think so. Revelatory? Yes, that’s more like it.

The programme makers shone a light into a dark corner of life in our towns and cities, and their subjects gleefully condemn themselves from their own foul mouths.

There is the couple still bleating about what they are entitled to after being convicted of benefit fraud, the woman outraged at any suggestion that she should do anything other than live off the state, and the unrepentant career criminal, of whom his mate said admiringly in one episode: “This guy is one of the best shoplifters I ever met in my life.” All of whom, of course, express themselves with liberal use of the F-word.

Nowhere do any of them demonstrate the slightest appreciation that their lives are skewed, badly off-course, that to be a sponger and scrounger is just plain wrong and idleness is not something to be aspired to.

These are not people in despair at being unemployed, but revelling in it, secure in the knowledge that those who get themselves out of bed and off to work come rain or shine will keep them afloat.

What a culture in which to bring up children, whose lessons in life do not bode well for a bright future.

Here in Yorkshire, we know only too well the misery that unemployment causes for the honest and hard-working.

The dark economic times through which we have passed have seen thousands thrown out of work through no fault of their own.

It is no exaggeration to say that the consequent worry and money problems can wreck lives and destroy families.

Those with longer memories recall with a shudder the consequences of the collapse of our traditional industries – textiles in the 70s, steel and engineering in the 80s, coal in the 90s – that wrought such damage on the communities that depended upon them for their livelihoods.

A robust and sensible benefits system helped all those people down the decades and continues to aid those who need it. That is exactly as it should be.

The system is there to fall back on in times of trial, to provide a lifeline until people can get back on their feet.

That’s a concept alien to the residents of Benefits Street, or the man in the pub near me, who have no intention of standing on their own feet as they eff and blind about “The Social”, while milking it.

The time is long overdue for these deadbeats to have another four-letter word forced into their vocabularies. Work.