'Battling with Benefits' - an excellent BBC Wales documentary series
An evening in the Jenkins' household and my wife's watching the latest Scandi crime drama while accessing the news on her laptop ; younger daughter juggles with phone while watching a film on her tablet ; I tap away at my own tablet like some demented woodpecker, involved in an argument with various shades of the Left on Facebook.
I should really give up social media.
I love the banter, access to alternative news, opportunity to sound off and also to get my poetry out instantly.
However, the anniversary of the Olympics opening ceremony is also the sad anniversary of losing a friend because of opinions.
I wrote a blog highly critical of Danny Boyle's much-praised opening for the London Olympics. I found the spectacle both Anglo-centric and pro-royalty and said so candidly.
One friend took an exception and condemned it as an outpouring of bile. He declared that he'd never be meeting me for a pint again in Aberystwyth.
He was a Uni friend and, with a couple of others, we had made contact and, for many years, staged our own re-union/ piss-up in Aber.
All of them were left-wing Englishmen and very sympathetic towards Wales; but he was more so than the others.
He was an avid reader of my blog ( one of the few!) and would even chase up bands like The Joy Formidable on my recommendation.
He was enthusiastic about the Welsh language, yet cut off our friendship with a sarcastic 'Meiiiiic!'
I apologized for any offence I'd caused, saying that wasn't my intention.
We've had no communication since then and I sometimes wonder whether being a Bolshie Blogger is worth it.
My older daughter would call us 'keyboard warriors' and claim we need to get out and campaign and she's got a point. Yet since the demise of Cymru Goch there's been no movement to join which tallies with my ideals.
Sometimes I think TV is better, as I can sit and yell at the screen and nobody gets hurt.
Having said that, I can't resist taking to Twitter when 'Question Time' is on and spouting views like a volcanic geyser.
Over recent months I must admit that TV has had a profound influence, as there have been a series of fascinating documentaries and other programmes.
On S4C alone I've thoroughly enjoyed writer and artist Sion Tomos Owen's funny and engaging series 'Pobol y Rhondda', where he interviews characters up and down the two valleys there and draws their caricatures while doing so. The series also focused on Sion's family and showed how vital Cymraeg can be to working-class communities.
It's good to hear that Sion's doing another series, though (he tells me) with a slightly different angle.
Several documentaries on S4C were highly informative and enlightening, including one on the great photographer Philip Jones Griffiths which showed how his stark, compassionate images of the war in Vietnam totally altered people's perceptions.
Another, on 'Frongoch', was presented by new National Poet Ifor ap Glyn and was very sympathetic towards the IRA prisoners kept in that camp in north Wales after the 1916 Rising in Dublin. It illustrated how Gaelic became a language of revolution and how prisoners even used Welsh to endear themselves to locals.
S4C is definitely the channel to seek out exceptional one-off documentaries, yet I've been equally impressed with the recent BBC Wales series of three documentaries 'Battling with Benefits'.
Set in Bridgend and following the stories of three couples or individuals in each programme, it set out to be very different from the sensationalism of series such as Channel 4's 'Skint', which was very much an outsider's viewpoint.
'Battling With Benefits' was filmed with considerable sensitivity and chose people for their endearing stories rather than eccentricity.
Each programme in the series of just three followed their struggle to survive as the benefits system changed greatly.
The importance of the local Citizens Advice Bureau was fundamental and I recall how Merthyr's Labour Council could no longer support one in this town.
Here is a system designed to encourage people to work,but which achieved the exact opposite in many cases!
One couple constantly applied for appropriate jobs, but were always sent to work they had no training for at all.
Benefits were stopped for spurious reasons, leaving people in desperate situations.
Some won appeals, but a young girl with severe hearing problems lost hers despite help from the CAB.
My main criticism would be that it didn't expose the many workfare placements jobseekers are sent on : charities, shops and bigger companies who exploit them as slave labour under the pretence of 'training' which rarely happens.
I wrote the following poem after watching the final programme about a man who chooses not to sign on any more as his wife gets a job and he automatically loses his benefit ( another ludicrous policy).
Maybe I need to stop getting embroiled in Facebook discussions and seek out more good television.
INTA THE BLACK
I dropped off of yewer system,
don' afto sign on,
I int no statistic
an yew carn stop my benefit
coz my missis got a job
an I'm sick o disappointment.
There's over a million
jest like me,
fallen off of the edge
of compewter cliffs
an inta the black,
landed on a ledge.
I like it down yer
idin in-a dark,
there's plenty o sharks
like ev'rywhere else,
but least I int chasin
along pointless paths.
Yew carn see me now
or send snoopers down,
rocks below are perilous
as men o war ;
an I'm like a goat
clamberin an leapin over laws.
I should really give up social media.
I love the banter, access to alternative news, opportunity to sound off and also to get my poetry out instantly.
However, the anniversary of the Olympics opening ceremony is also the sad anniversary of losing a friend because of opinions.
I wrote a blog highly critical of Danny Boyle's much-praised opening for the London Olympics. I found the spectacle both Anglo-centric and pro-royalty and said so candidly.
One friend took an exception and condemned it as an outpouring of bile. He declared that he'd never be meeting me for a pint again in Aberystwyth.
He was a Uni friend and, with a couple of others, we had made contact and, for many years, staged our own re-union/ piss-up in Aber.
All of them were left-wing Englishmen and very sympathetic towards Wales; but he was more so than the others.
He was an avid reader of my blog ( one of the few!) and would even chase up bands like The Joy Formidable on my recommendation.
He was enthusiastic about the Welsh language, yet cut off our friendship with a sarcastic 'Meiiiiic!'
I apologized for any offence I'd caused, saying that wasn't my intention.
We've had no communication since then and I sometimes wonder whether being a Bolshie Blogger is worth it.
My older daughter would call us 'keyboard warriors' and claim we need to get out and campaign and she's got a point. Yet since the demise of Cymru Goch there's been no movement to join which tallies with my ideals.
Sometimes I think TV is better, as I can sit and yell at the screen and nobody gets hurt.
Having said that, I can't resist taking to Twitter when 'Question Time' is on and spouting views like a volcanic geyser.
Over recent months I must admit that TV has had a profound influence, as there have been a series of fascinating documentaries and other programmes.
On S4C alone I've thoroughly enjoyed writer and artist Sion Tomos Owen's funny and engaging series 'Pobol y Rhondda', where he interviews characters up and down the two valleys there and draws their caricatures while doing so. The series also focused on Sion's family and showed how vital Cymraeg can be to working-class communities.
It's good to hear that Sion's doing another series, though (he tells me) with a slightly different angle.
Several documentaries on S4C were highly informative and enlightening, including one on the great photographer Philip Jones Griffiths which showed how his stark, compassionate images of the war in Vietnam totally altered people's perceptions.
Another, on 'Frongoch', was presented by new National Poet Ifor ap Glyn and was very sympathetic towards the IRA prisoners kept in that camp in north Wales after the 1916 Rising in Dublin. It illustrated how Gaelic became a language of revolution and how prisoners even used Welsh to endear themselves to locals.
S4C is definitely the channel to seek out exceptional one-off documentaries, yet I've been equally impressed with the recent BBC Wales series of three documentaries 'Battling with Benefits'.
Set in Bridgend and following the stories of three couples or individuals in each programme, it set out to be very different from the sensationalism of series such as Channel 4's 'Skint', which was very much an outsider's viewpoint.
'Battling With Benefits' was filmed with considerable sensitivity and chose people for their endearing stories rather than eccentricity.
Each programme in the series of just three followed their struggle to survive as the benefits system changed greatly.
The importance of the local Citizens Advice Bureau was fundamental and I recall how Merthyr's Labour Council could no longer support one in this town.
Here is a system designed to encourage people to work,but which achieved the exact opposite in many cases!
One couple constantly applied for appropriate jobs, but were always sent to work they had no training for at all.
Benefits were stopped for spurious reasons, leaving people in desperate situations.
Some won appeals, but a young girl with severe hearing problems lost hers despite help from the CAB.
My main criticism would be that it didn't expose the many workfare placements jobseekers are sent on : charities, shops and bigger companies who exploit them as slave labour under the pretence of 'training' which rarely happens.
I wrote the following poem after watching the final programme about a man who chooses not to sign on any more as his wife gets a job and he automatically loses his benefit ( another ludicrous policy).
Maybe I need to stop getting embroiled in Facebook discussions and seek out more good television.
INTA THE BLACK
I dropped off of yewer system,
don' afto sign on,
I int no statistic
an yew carn stop my benefit
coz my missis got a job
an I'm sick o disappointment.
There's over a million
jest like me,
fallen off of the edge
of compewter cliffs
an inta the black,
landed on a ledge.
I like it down yer
idin in-a dark,
there's plenty o sharks
like ev'rywhere else,
but least I int chasin
along pointless paths.
Yew carn see me now
or send snoopers down,
rocks below are perilous
as men o war ;
an I'm like a goat
clamberin an leapin over laws.
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