Jez backs ban on poverty porn shows
JEREMY Corbyn has backed calls to axe “poverty porn” TV shows like Benefits Street.
The Labour leader said stereotypes of so-called “scroungers” give the Government an excuse to ignore council estates and victims of the likes of the Grenfell Tower fire.
He added activists were “absolutely right” to call for him to write to regulators Ofcom and “make poverty porn history”.
Corbyn’s statement came as he took part in a Q&A about Tory attacks on social housing.
Film-maker Paul Sng said the shows left council tenants “demonised and stigmatised”, telling Corbyn: “Lobby Ofcom to get rid of these damaging stereotypes.
“If TV programmes stereotyped people with disabilities or people of colour the way they do to working-class people, it wouldn’t be allowed.” DARIUS Campbell has told how he fell into a coma and almost died after drinking from the Thames to promote his water aid charity.
The Scots singer drank from the river to show how a bottle filter could make the water safe.
But the 37-year-old didn’t realise his bottle didn’t have a filter – produced by his charity Fresh2o – attached.
Darius, from Bearsden, near Glasgow, contracted meningitis and cerebral oedema.
Fresh2o were set up to dig wells in Africa using profits from portable water filters.
Darius was shooting a demo video for the filter – which removes 99.9 per cent of known water-borne pathogens, bacteria