the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Anyone reading my post yesterday may be forgiven for mistakenly presuming that the contempt that I hold for ‘The Guardian’ – namely that they their frame stories to basically bolster their readers pre-existing narrative – is exclusive to them.

This is not so. They’re all at it, the media – well, what I consider to be media, anyway which is possibly indicative of my age, but so what – in choosing not just how to tell a story but much more insidious, what stories to tell in the first place.    

 And with impeccable timing one story, reported in at least four national newspapers yesterday, many more provincial and local ones probably, and the BBC, proves it to be undeniably true.

“Bulgarians pocket £50m from taxpayer in Britain’s biggest benefits fraud”

Was the headline in “The Daily Telegraph’, with ‘The Daily Mirror’ equally appalled by the fact that;

“Wood Green Crown Court heard how between October 2016 and May 2021, the organised crime group made thousands of false claims for Universal Credit using either real people or hijacked identities. The claims were supported by an array of forged documents, including fictitious tenancy agreements, counterfeit payslips and forged letters from landlords, employers, and GPs.”

Not be be outdone in frothing at the mouth anger stakes, The Daily Express added this,

“Over a period of four and a half years, the gang ran a cunning scheme via three corner shops in Wood Green.…If a claim was knocked back, they would simply have another go until it was accepted…The Universal Credit landed in a range of more than a hundred bank accounts before being withdrawn by the crooks at the bank.”

And with a tedious predictability, ‘The Daily Mail’ chipped in with

“Prosecutors said the gang used the benefits system ‘like a cash machine’ and on one of the seized mobile phones was a video showing the fraudsters showering their flat with hundreds of £20 notes.”

The BBC quoted specialist CPS prosecutor Ben Reid who said;

“These defendants conspired to commit industrial-scale fraud against the Universal Credit system,” he said. Submitting thousands of false claims, the organised criminals enriched themselves from government funds designed to protect and help the most vulnerable people in our society.”

But rather than vilifying them, should not the press have lauded them for their ingenuity in seeing the potential for enriching themselves and using the system against itself. And also, they’re fucking amateurs at this whole benefit scam thing anyway. 

What did they net? £54 Millions. How much work did that take? Setting up shops as fronts, opening false bank accounts and whole palaver of making a Universal Credit claim in the first place. It can take the best part of an hour for them to even answer the ‘phone.

No, when it comes to a gang who used the benefits system ‘like a cash machine’  then the true criminals are The Royal Family. £86.3 millions they netted last year by the much less stressful method of simply being given it. Both main political parties, normally so keen to be seen as tough on welfare cheats and demonise those who live their lives solely on benefit payments when it happens at one end of the social spectrum, give a free pass to those at the other end.   

The press, who think that £54 millions is a scandal see no hypocrisy whatsoever in forensically examining every detail Royal Family’s stolen booty. Somehow, they own £15.6 billions worth of property and land in the UK, yet we pay for their weddings. They get sick and somehow we pay for their private treatment. They wear expensive hats and yet we pay for their holidays. They can have more than two children and yet are not subject to the same benefit cap as everyone else.

It’d be laughable except its an costly joke on us.