In Search of the British Work Ethic

In Search of the British Work Ethic (Radio 4) saw columnist Melanie Phillips plunged into an entirely alien world as she travelled through deprived locations in the north-east for this documentary about what work means in areas of entrenched, long-term unemployment. She was good enough to admit this. "Things that I take for granted," she observed, after chatting to young men trying to find work, "they don't have these things. To get on a bus costs money." She heard from a man on long-term incapacity benefit who had never queried what she called the "pyramid of pills" he had to take each day. "I would be using my middle-class sharp elbows for second and third opinions," she said. "My head's spinning a bit," she admitted. Phillips (pictured) is a bright woman and social commentator, so it was hard to see how the limitations of these lives came as such a surprise to her. She was, though, a more sympathetic guide through the programme than you might expect, and her account lingered over the very real challenges that keep people on benefits. For one woman, qualified as a counsellor, but unable to get work after a year, the job was about self-esteem more than the negligible difference in money and real disincentives: "Things like school meals, I would have to start paying for." Elisabeth Mahoney