How those on benefits and how the poor are perceived throughout the medium of television and radio and other media has become a controversial subject. There seems to be a rather nasty attitude towards those who for different reasons find themselves on the UK's forever changing benefit system in 2015. This belief may have been brought about by the governments statement of the 'something for nothing culture' making those on benefits look like scroungers and wasterals.
No doubt there are those that are like that, and are quite content to sit at home and contribute nothing to society not even volunteering, while tax payers fund welfare.
However there are plenty of people on welfare in the UK who are genuinely in need of benefits because they are seriously ill or find themselves with out a job.
What is disturbing, however, is how those on welfare are shown by programmes supposedly showing the plight of the poor and the unemployed. Channel 4's 'Benefit Street' and Channel 5's 'Life on the dole' seems to show a particular kind of person on welfare and that seems to be a particularly negative image of people on benefits when in the real world not all people on benefits are like this.
Benefits for the unemployed and ill were changed due to the Reform Act of 2012 whose mantra is 'making work pay', benefits for the long term unemployed like JSA (Jobseekers Allowance) or for the long term sick ESA (Employment and Support Allowance) are going to be put into one benefit known as Universal Credit and paid monthly as opposed to fortnightly.
£12 billion of cuts will be shaved off Iain Ducan Smith's dept the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) to cut the deficit and to balance the books according to Chancellor George Osborne. Apparently in the cabinet there have been meetings between the Chancellor and the DWP minister about how best to go about taking this money from the DWP.
David Cameron and the church have clashed over the issues of the poor and how all these changes and cuts to the welfare budget will impact on those that require them.
