March 2008

Our unhealthy DWP obsession

Backchat would not like to be seen to be obsessed with our friends in the Department for Worthless Promises (sorry… Department for Work and Pensions) press office.

They do try, bless them. But sometimes, you wonder if they really are as desperate to help their close pals in the disability media as they could be.

One recent example: the DWP has hired banker David Freud to offer advice on helping people off benefits and into work. Mr Freud has already implied that many current claimants are workshy fraudsters.

But the DWP press office seemed strangely reluctant to source a picture of Mr Freud for us. In fact, they seemed strangely reluctant to deal with our request at all.

Surely they’re not embarrassed about their latest recruit?

Fishing for PR compliments among the mixed metaphors

Backchat’s regular reader will know there is little that tickles this column’s fancy more than a few choice mixed metaphors.

So it was with a growing sense of elation that Backchat read a press release from Shaw Trust about a “miracle working fisherman”.

The man’s life was turned around, apparently, after he contacted Shaw Trust, following ten years on benefits.

After finding himself on a “scrap heap” and both “at the end of his tether” and “lower than a snake’s belly”, he is now helping “shoals of troubled youngsters” turn their own lives around.

One can only congratulate our fisherman on cutting himself free from his tether, finding his way down from the scrap heap and then directing the shoals of troubled young fish from the water’s edge.