The following is why trade unions matter - because they raise issues that otherwise get ignored or overlooked by middle class opinion formers.
The TUC will challenge the media to stop discriminating against people on low incomes by portraying them as 'scroungers' and 'benefits cheats', at the TUC's annual poverty conference in London today (Friday).
The conference Challenging Povertyism - held on World Poverty Day - will tackle the negative way people on lower incomes are stereotyped by the media, and challenge how the Government communicates with people living in poverty.
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'All too often we see tabloid headlines slating people living in poverty as 'benefits cheats'.
'Popular television programmes like 'Shameless' and 'Wife Swap' portray people on low incomes as 'scroungers' and second class citizens, worthy of ridicule.
'But poverty is not a laughing matter. Nearly four million children in the UK - one in three children - are growing up in poverty, and we have one of the worst child poverty records in the industrialised world.
'Contrary to media stereotypes, people on low incomes are not all cheating the benefits system. More than half of children living in poverty have parents in work, but many are caught up in a cycle of low paid insecure jobs.
'The majority of people on low incomes want decent work but are struggling, particularly in the current economic climate.
'The UK has one of the lowest levels of social mobility in the developed world. Negative portrayals of people on low incomes in the media as lazy, feckless, scrounging on the dole and somehow worth less than the rest of society do nothing to help social cohesion.'
The only time you see poor people on TV is as victims, perpetrators of crime or passive consumers. They're briefly interviewed on some news programme because of a crime or they've made it on to a game show or talent contest. They're lucky to get one dimensional treatment and when the BBC does a series on the white working class it makes it all about race.
And Mike Leigh films such as Life is Sweet aren't much better. Stick to Shane Meadows instead.
Sorry, rant over (and good on yer, TUC)
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