Channel 4 and Channel 5 have been obsessed with Benefits Porn for a while now, Benefits Street, my 40 benefit children and all the other rubbish. But I have just seen an advert for a new low - Benefits pets!! They have actually gone to the effort of making a programme purely dedicated to showing people on benefits who have the audacity to have a dog, Cat or Snakes etc. They really are scraping the barrel now. I don't understand why people actually willingly go on these shows - OK Channel 4 treats them fairly well, but the narration on just about every channel 5 is so downright nasty, and sneering, I just cant believe people continue to go on them, unless they were all filmed before any have been broadcast. It is almost literally stuff like "Jane is off for a haircut today, paid for by the blood, sweat and tears of hardworking taxpayers, but Jane is OK, she can sit on her fat ass all day on benefits" And they have to point out the most obscure parts of their lifestyle and ram down our throats that benefits are paying for it, in case we didn't realise from the title of the programme, and the 88 other mentions of the word Benefits to that point. I would like to see Channel 4 (from the evidence so far, C5 is incapable of seeing beyond "scroungers") do a couple of shows on the working poor, on the people working minimum wage who also have to rely on benefits to top up, as their employers arent prepared to pay a decent wage. But then, I would like to see HMRC or whomever pubish a yearly list of all the companies, at least the national/franchised ones who only pay minimum wage, and thus the corporate coffers are shored up by taxpayers benefits - stuff like working tax credit is not a benefit to the individual, it is very much a benefit for already wealthy shareholders and CEO's.

The RICS Rural Land Market Survey has found bare land averaged £6,115/ac during the first six months of the year, an increase of 5% over six months. Their transaction based measure which includes equipped farms, climbed 6% to an average of £7,479/ac in England and Wales.