Apparently we are all a bunch of work shy slackers here in Thanet. According to both the "News of the World" and "The People" (two papers not exactly famed for their fact finding abilities) we are all here to laze in the sun (what sun?) and claim benefits.

I work bloody hard from seven or eight in the morning until six or later every single day. This year I have only had 3 days in which I have not worked. Most people expect to have Saturday and Sunday off each week but I know that I do not have the time for that.

Given the utter inability of these two national newspapers to even tell half the story here are a few facts that upset their over sensationalised and frankly insulting attack on Thanet.



Let me be clear on this - the plural of anecdote is not data. Trotting out a few stories of things people said after a reporter may or may not have paid them (I hear stories too but don't report everything I hear) does not constitute proof.

The figures are not quite so sensational when you take into account the number of people on low incomes that also claim benefits. Especially as many low income jobs leave you worse off than if you were unemployed and listing the best paying jobs currently at the job centre does nothing to address the huge skills to requirements miss-match.

This is bollocks reporting at it's most stupid. There is a chance to highlight serious abuses by slum land lords and councils shirking their responsibilities onto us - to show the world the depth of need and the total deinvestment in people - but instead they call us cheats, liers and scroungers.

They fail to mention that unemployment in Thanet as a whole is far higher than the national average and that skills are far lower. They fail to mention that the reason all faith has been lost in the system is that they system has failed the people of Thanet so often and with such regularity. This is where the unwanted people are dumped - so who can blame them if they no longer have the get up and go to get back out of Thanet, have stopped trying and have such low expectations that sixty quid a week seems like a good deal?

It is true that Dolby Square and other locations around Cliftonville have become the dumping ground for unwanted people. I have family that have worked on courses designed to get the long term unemployed back to work. The common themes that come up time and again are that qualifications are lacking, addresses are known benefits "dumps" (no one wants to employ someone from a benefits hole) and overwhelmingly the people that get sent on these causes lack some fairly basic life management skills.

Add this to the fact that years of economic depression in the area have led to pressure on the once proud hotel industry to "take the pressure of the council housing shortage" and we have "benefits by the sea" - a policy whereby councils from all over the country have been sending the long term unemployed.

It is a well known secret that Thanet is the answer to those quota issues in other locations. It has created a situation where huge ghettos of sub standard accommodation were created simply to cram as many "DSS claimants" in as possible so the land lords could cash guarentteed council cheques every week.

Learn the truth about Thanet and suddenly it is no surprise that the area with the most "hotels" is also the place with the most people on benefits. This is not a sign that "the people of Margate are inherently lazy" or even that JSA and other benefits are a bad thing it is a clear and present sign that Thanet has been continuously raped by the system leaving us to try and care for the disenfranchised, the emotionally unable and the utterly unqualified while some tosser who is not even any good at their job calls us a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings.

I suggest that Neville Thurlbeck, Jennifer Wiley, Jessica Boulton and Nick Dorman try doing their job for a change and stop talking about things they clearly do not understand. Even the substandard reporting of Martin Jefferies was better than the name calling four and his story was not much better.

We, the people of Thanet, might be willing to put up with utter diabolical shite from our local reporters but clearly expecting anything at all from the nationals was too much to ask for. My message to these failed reported is that they should go back to publishing speculation about failed pop stars and leave the real problem solving to people that do not need to be reminded to breath in and out every once in a while.

Yes, I'm angry! Want to make something of it?