Sunday, December 06, 2009

Alienate, annoy, frustrate and infuriate all in one go

Somebody in s Warwickshire County Council sat down and thought: “What can we do to really get up the noses of the over-50s - let’s create the gold standard for pissing off the oldies”.

Either this is the explanation or the Daily Telegraph has mistaken the 5th December for the 1st April.

It would seem that deep in the bowels of the council some twerp decided to promote a service to allow “older people” to bring in their old slippers and replace them with a pair of new ones that will cut the risk of them falling over.

Not only did the council alienate, frustrate, annoy and infuriate its older tax payers it wants to charge them a fee of £5 for the fitting session. For this princely fee they are presented with a brand spanking new pair of the Velcro fastening slippers and advice on how to don them and avoid accidents around the home. You know, the advanced stuff of not lifting your right and left foot at the same time.

So there you are, if you want the “best how not to deal with the over-50s” example of the year you need look no further. Dick Stroud

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ill-fitting slippers have been shown to contribute to falls in the elderly. Someone tries to reduce that risk by offering a slipper exchange and fitting service and all you can do is sneer. Sad really.

DickStroud said...

The scheme starts for people who still have 15 years before they reach retirement age. Maybe a tad young to start doshing out new slippers don't you think. The sad thing is that this example illustrates how inept the public sector is in communicating with older people, but then it aint much good at doing it with the young generation.

Anonymous said...

65 is as arbitrary a number as 50 -isn't it far better to advertise a service to everyone who might need it. It's worth noting that the Telegraph article contained no quotes from actual fifty year olds people in Warwickshire who were feeling patronised - just a bunch of the usual rentaquotes (Taxpayers Alliance? yawn) who were suitably outraged on their behalf. So, who's doing the patronising?!