Did anyone see Panarama on Monday? It wasn't very flattering towards Birkenhead. It was about single mum's, apparently we're not quite top of the league on that one but close. Blody hell, didn't know that some were getting upwards of 250 smackers a week and the rent paid on top. Anyway, they picked the most unflattering shots of the town and really made it look like an ongoing bombed site.

I didnt see it, this is an ongoing problem with documentary makers coming to the North West to make sensationalist TV, Anfield had it with the secret millionaire last year, where there were reports of the makers putting broken bottles and half a skip of rocks in the road to add a little frisson of danger and ambience. Sensationalist sh**e.
K

It saddens me, and I'm not even from these parts. The area isn't anything like as bad as people have made out, though some people I meet are still quite wary of me, which I assume is because I'm a southerner

Watch it here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xxl5q/Panorama_Britains_Missing_Dads/

It's repeated on Thursday night/Friday morning at 0:25 BBC1.

Sorry to hear that Dan,but we do experience southerners looking down their nose at us. We should not expect them all to be the same,just as they shouldn't 'pigeon hole' us. Glad you thought that we are a good enough place to 'lay your hat'

I've found that it is certainly true when they say that they are more friendly in the north than down south.
I'm always speaking to people when out shopping or on the bus - I wouldn't dream of doing that down south

Thanks Softy,that's nice of you.My sister lives in Kent in a tiny village which is friendly,but away from there it's a different story.

My Step Brother,lives in Reading and works in Windsor.He has tried to lose his accent to get along with neighbors etc. He worked in Canary Wharfe before that in the computer gaming industry. He went to uni'but still had a lot of predudice toward him.He said that when they hear your accent,they assume your 'thick'.

I seen this and I totally agree.Everytime they want to use an example of a bad situation or a social problem they head up north,especially to Merseyside.
I was watching it with my other half (a geordie who's never been back home with me)and had to explain that it's not that bad, and as Kamakazi9 quite rightly pointed out,it is sensationalist sh*t.
At first I was ambarrassed but then just got annoyed with it.They made every single shot look grey and gloomy,in the most run down places.

If you can press the bbc red button > bbci player > factual and scroll down until you find mondays panarama.

Best wishes
Chris

I was gobsmacked when I saw it as I know Jill qual (one of the young people advisors, talking on it about the problems we have. Very informal program though. credit to the makers.

Mild Rant

I don't look down my nose at anyone, as I firmly believe I am no better or worse than any other human being. We're all in the same game of life together, so I am sickened by a lot of my fellow Southerners that really do think that all "Northerners" (blanket term for anyone above Birmingham), are idiots, whiling away their days until their slot on Jeremy Kyle to discuss which members of their family lifted grandma's savings. I moved to these parts a year ago to be with my Wallasey born'n'bred girlfriend, I had no expectations or pre-judgements of what kind of people I would encounter. I take as I find, and do my part to try and help anyone and everyone. People are just people, and there are good and bad everywhere in the world. North/South/East/West has nothing to do with it.

I am actually half of Northern descent anyway, my mum was a Yorkshire girl, and her dad was a Sheffield Steel worker, and her mum a Yorkshire home maker and good house wife! I only ended up being born in the south as my grandfather was moved from Sheffield when the works closed (part of the industrial decline in the North), and was offered resettlement at Enfield works (North London), as a result my mum met a Southern man, and I became a North/South Hybrid.

I feel a great deal of sympathy with Merseyside, the decline in the shipping and industrial sectors is a crying shame, and even though I am not from these parts, I feel sad whenever I'm biking around at the docks, they are an edifice of a once bustling and rich past. I love the architecture of the area, the "Victoriana". I have grown a fondness for the area in the short time I have been here, and can often be found staring out over the Mersey with the same thoughtful expression as any local!

I've watched all the old panorama documentaries about the decline in these parts, decent family men and women from Birkenhead and Ellesmere Port scouring rubbish sites for things to sell, and I feel lucky to have not had to witness such things - I don't look down on the people of those times or areas, I actually respect them for doing what they had to, to survive. I'm actually dead keen on the re-development of this area, I want Wirral Waters to work, and I can't wait to see Neptune and head to the cinema, I cry if I watch the fire at the New Brighton tower, and while I don't feel anger looking at the book "The Last Resort" (as some do) I do see it as a sad pictorial of an area allowed to rot by an ignorant government that ploughed most of its investment into the south.

This is an area of proud, and hardened people, and their ways are entirely understandable. As such, when people give me sideways looks for my "funny accent", I don't take it personally.

Wow, not going to 'quote' all of that but welcome to the friendliest place on the planet dan0h. You sound like a local already.

Haha, thanks bud

I'm sorry Bezzymate but change your statement to an 'I' not a 'we'.
who are the 'we'?? Certainly not a wiki collective!!

I thought the programme was quite good ! It made some good points about
absent fathers and the crazy benefit system that we have at the moment. It was
NOT showing rubbish tips and tinned-up houses . I saw Holt Hill with nicely
painted houses and Argyle Street South and one or two other Tranmere roads.
It also had a piece about a father living in South London so it was not just
concentrating on this area or criticising Birkenhead people . Good short ,well
made film . Someone on here has very thin skin!
Tranmere Methodist has been doing a great job for the local community for many
years. Yet again, Wirral Borough Council has failed and Housing Market Renewal
has ground to a halt . All their promises to residents have been broken!

now silence

I always wonder what this type of programme is really about, if its about feckless fathers as they seem to call them, then why is there a need to raise what benefits the girls and their children are receiving, are they suggesting if an absent father coughs up £200 a week then he is relieved of any fatherly duties, there are plenty in the upper echelon bracket that do that.
Are they suggesting the benefit system pays out to much to single parent families, or is it only to families who have developed out of wedlock, are we now going down a road of treating certain members of society, unmarried mothers different from widows etc, They all have children and its the innocents we are supposedly protecting. Maybe some people would be happier if we went back to workhouses and institutions for the single parent families who claim off the state.
Obviously we would rather see them supported by the fathers, nothing wrong with that, Frank Field mentioned 3 million jobs in recent times have gone to people from outside this country, why are successive governments allowing this to happen, Where's the look after your own gone, its all so politicians can sit around a table in Europe and say were playing the game.

Flattering or unflattering to Birkenhead, its going on everywhere in the country, and plenty of women go out purposely to get pregnant, because they see it as a meal ticket, the benefits system rewards them too greatly for popping out a kid, whilst we stupid people who decide to go to work and make a decent, honest, living, get shafted for tax etc...

The problem with the benefits system, is it is such a great scheme for those who don't want to work, and have not intention of ever working, that it is now seen by many as a viable, long-term alternative to a job, a way of life.

I believe they should make those on long-term unemployment benefits (2 or 3+ years) be paid in vouchers instead of cash - lets see how many Plasma TV's and Xbox games they can purchase with a £2 per week eletrical voucher, lets see how much weed they can purchase with £20 per week food vouchers, lets see how many cars they can afford to run with a £7 per week electric and gas vouchers... Obviously, these figures are just random, and have no basis on what living requirements actually are, but its a hypothetical idea.

The system is able to work out how much a person requires to live on and how much they should be entitled to, on the basis of some calculation so it should work, and begin to push the long-term unemployed towards doing something with their lives instead of sitting idle for decade after decade being supported by mine, and every other workers tax. Of course, im all for people being able to spend their money how they like, and they free to do so, there would be just one catch, they would have to get of their arses and earn the money instead of taking it out of the system.

Another idea I had would be to decrease the benefit for those who have never contributed, by 10% year on year, after they have been claiming for 12 months, maybe even less. And for those who have worked, they should work out a timeframe for the reductions to start, based on how long they have contributed (note - not how much they have contributed, but how long - otherwise lower-paid workers who find themselves out of work could be disadvantaged). And reduce their housing and council tax benefit by 5% per year too! Im all for the governments new idea of people never being better off out of work, than in work, but in reality, do we honestly believe that the average weed-smoking, good for nothing scally, who has ZERO interest in working (or indeed a middle aged person, who has become of the same attitude), is going to get out bed every day and do some hard graft for a few miserly quid? I don't for one minute think working to earn £10 a week more than on benefits will make a blind bit of difference to them - lets start making life gradually harder and harder - and I also agree with getting the long-term unemployed onto "community payback" style shcemes etc...

It may seem harsh, but I, and I am sure most people, are getting sick and tired of watching lowlife ... being paid to sit on the feckin arses, smoking weed and playing Xbox games. Not everyone on the dole has no interest in getting themselves back into employment, but the sad truth of the matter is, many do, the system is out of control and action needs to be taken, and swiftly.

As for single mums and benefits relating to children, how the hell we change it, is anyones guess, because cutting benefits towards children, would possibly be a bad thing for those children - however one could argue that a signficant cut in the amount of benefits the parents recieve could increase the amount of young girls who see it as easy alternative to working? You could say make all fathers ineligable for benefits if they have a child, but then the girl just uses the old "I don't know who the father is" loophole. I guess the only way to change it, is, short of removing every child that is born to parents who do not want to work to support them from the parents, is to change attitudes - something which may take two or more generations to happen, if it is even possible. In other countries, to have a child before you are financially and mentally secure and stable to look after it, is seen as a social taboo, in this country the young girls (and lads) who pop these kids out every couple of years, with the sole intention of living off the state for life, don't give a damn what we hard-working folk and politicians say about them, because all their peers are doing the same thing - how do you even begin to change that attitude?

Benefit payments should be relative to the amount that the individual has put into the government over the years in their Tax and NI. When the pot runs dry, then the individual has to act.

Sorry for any offence caused,I meant in general and that he felt at home here meaning Wallasey. There was no reference to Wiki members I would never assume I could speak for others.

The way i see benefits and have always been under the opinion, the benefit levels in this country are set by the powers to be, whoever they may be, to be at a level where people in need can live a life of existence, free from starvation and going cold, etc and having some quality of life. The so called experts are supposedly able to work this out.If the benefits are at such a level,where a person or family can only achieve this where is the incentive to find work,if the level of pay is lower, as i see it, if the powers to be have set the correct rates for benefits and if we leave the so called ... bags out of it for a moment, and ask the opinion of the decent people on benefits, they will tell you its not easy and can be a struggle.
Once again i would ask, if we put an extremely high figure on it and say there are 1million scumbags on the dole who should be working, why haven't the other 2 million plus decent people on the dole been offered these jobs.
What certainly needs looking at is, if 3 million jobs went to foreigners, how do we stop it.

It amazes me all the money the single mothers recieve - I'm sure it does not always go onto necessary items for their children. A coupon system would see this change - stipulating what they are to spend it on eg nappies, baby food, baby clothes. Wonder if they will think twice about having a kid if they only end up with the same amount of £benefits as they would have if there were no offspring. Afterall, the money is for the childrens' needs.

By blowing up the EU haha!

Right behind you Matt, tin hat at the ready.

Bert - out of interest, because you always give a sensible and informitive answer (though I may not always agree), what are your opinions on a coupon-style system for the long-term unemployed (maybe 3+ years)?

And how about long-term unemployment benefit being graudally decreased over a period years, to make it harder and harder for "scroungers" to live, based upon how "long" they have contributed to society previous to being on benefits (through working).

We could do it covertly - if we refuse to bail out the EU countries any further, get our "special neighbours" over the pond to do the same, we could watch the EU economy fall (unless China find it in their hearts to lend them a hand). Once they are all skint and bankrupt, we can be the only EU superpower, and thus we may as well progress without being a part of the EU, require all non-UK workers to have work permits, thus send all the EU workers home when one considers the cap they introducing lol, and thus problem solved.

Yep, ive lost track of my opinion too!

Matt, on the coupon system like most systems, it is open to abuse, coupons can for example be sold on at a loss to gain cash for drugs etc, it would have to be pretty foolproof for it to work, even if they had to line up for food with id cards, unless it was eaten on the spot, that could be sold. While i can see the reasoning behind it, actually putting it in to force and for it to work as meant would be a nightmare.

National insurance is supposed to be our way of paying for our benefits, and i suppose future generations also, if we can't as a country provide enough jobs, how can scumbags or otherwise accrue some sort of pot. i can't see how we can sort out scumbags and force them into labour (jobs) if there aren't enough jobs to go around.
We would have to get pretty barbaric to sort out what that programme was about, i can't see a country like this going down that line.

Yep, I have to accept we are maybe 10 years too late with the idea's... one thing the last Labour government has to be considered guilty of, is not cracking down on the "scroungers" abusing the system, when we had the economical conditions and jobs to do it. I was quite amazed, when they announced their plans to reform the system, and get the long-term unemployed back into work, in about 2008, just as the economy was starting to drown, and jobless figures were rising rapidly.

It seems as though the long-term unemployed were not a priority or even an afterthought for Labour, whilst the finances were (apparently) good, but only became an issue once the finances dried up, by which time it was too late in so many respects.

Any system such as the voucher system, as you say, is open to abuse and could affect some innocent, genuine claimants, but we certainly need to do something radical to actually get the idea that working is good, morally, financially, physically and emotionally, into the heads of some of these scroungers. If they could even contepmlate giving it a try, for a few months, im sure a lot of them could turn their lives around and realise the positive aspects of working for a living, but whilst there is no pressure or reason for them to try, there is no way they are going to bother.

Every government have had its levels of unemployment and i suppose as the populace goes up, so does unemployment, i think thats the case going right back, apart from wartime. It didn't help when traditional blue collar work was eroded, whatever the reason, it didn't help when both parents decided they had the need for work, I'm not knocking that but it took a lot of jobs out of the system. Also one of my beliefs is people working past the age of 65 and probably soon to be 70, those jobs should be filled by youngsters.
And now I'm going to have a dentist run his finger around my mouth and get charged over £16, if i was on the dole I'd get that free.

Rediculous isnt it, hope all goes well, shame you won't leave smiling after they have lightened your wallet!