Poverty Porn

I've never watched anything involving Ross Kemp before, so I wasn't sure what to expect from his programme on Sky 1. I couldn't watch it right through. I had to stop at every ad break so I could have a walk about and a swear.

As always, I was angry at first. Why pick on Glasgow? Then I realised he's probably working his way round the UK showing us the alleged underbelly of our society. And why show us Neil, who lived in utter squalor - dear gawd, imagine that as your neighbour - you can be poor but do you really have to live in filth like that? - who had apparently pulled his own toes off and seemed to feel he was not responsible for his situation?

My first reaction once I'd calmed down was that Ross Kemp could have been in any city in the developed world. Not the third world - they don't have 'welfare' systems there. I've met a man on a garage forecourt in Chile who was flogging trinkets in hopes of getting enough money to pay for his next cancer treatment. I've also been faced with people with the most awful disabilities in India, Africa and Russia who had no option but to beg.

But I hate the word 'welfare' as it's used in the UK these days. It's been imported from the USA in the past ten years and every time it's used, it suggests people are getting something for nothing, whereas we know that a lot of folk who get jobseeker's allowance, carer's allowance, disability benefit, etc are folk who for years have worked and contributed through taxes and national insurance and are entitled to claim.

My second impression was that Kemp was being quite positive: he showed us three young men who'd been in the drugs business and a young woman dragged into addiction by a relative who was abusing her. All turning their lives around. No longer homeless. Maybe not contributing to society yet but at least not a drag on the rest of us through thieving and prostitution.

But my final thought is less positive: what do Kemp's producers hope to achieve by making programmes like this? Do they imagine David Cameron is sitting in his jammies in Number 10 on a Monday night tutting or weeping over these lost souls?

We know there are abuses of the 'welfare' system. Now that Kemp has got some of the populace riled up or indignant about them, has he got any ideas for what to do? No, I didn't think so. So this is after all just poverty porn: we're only doing what Derek Cooper, the food guru, was once accused of doing: looking into the lives of the poor and sneering.