How do you fancy being thrown among the riff-raff without your blackberry, expense account or motorcade? Four British Members of Parliament were made to find out for themselves in a new Channel 4 documentary.
Tower Block of Commons features Mark Oaten (LibDem), Iain Duncan Smith (Con), Tim Loughton (Con) and Austin Mitchell (Lab) being parachuted into run-down areas around Britain. Selected local residents provide the necessary guidance and accommodation. Judging by the Sun's article, without the local sherpas the four MPs would be dead meat, no doubt knifed for fun by a gang of local feral youths (as the British press likes referring to that brand of criminal).
The MPs are taunted by local residents who recognize their faces and their scandals and the cameras hardly let their gaffes slip. The Sun gleefully cites the Labour MP who exhibited insensitivity and arrogance beyond measurable bounds. He's the one who appeared to have the lightest of the four estates by the sound of things.
Will I watch it? Yes, on YouTube eventually. As far as getting the servants back in touch with the electorate this is some necessary bitter medicine. However Channel 4 manages to turn poverty, crime, destitution, unemployment and hopelessness into another bloody reality TV set, local residents as unwitting props for an audience's delectation. When did taunting someone because of his homosexual liaisons and (hypothetical) AIDS status become entertainment?
Let's hope future governments will make these estates rarer by raising people out of the poverty trap that Labour has set them. In the meantime, the world's a stage. I won't pay for admission.
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