Apologies that my first post in ages is a rant, but it is at least vaguely design related. If you want an insight into what the great and the good actually think of benefit claimants then you need look no further than the internal staff benefits document produced by advertising agency Iris.
Cunningly titled 'Iris on Benefits' (see what they did there?), it features such lovely stereotypes as a pregnant woman smoking, childcare down the pub and what are presumably teenage shoplifters. While my first temptation was to laugh (it's supposed to be a parody of that awful 'Shameless' programme, which isn't funny either), that Iris has won several lucrative government contracts (including campaigns for benefit changes and, good grief, the Olympics) tells us all we really need to know about how the 'upper classholes' - to borrow from the new series of The Thick of It' - view the most vulnerable members of society. So on reflection it's not just nasty, it's downright shameful.
