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Just what we needed: Workie, the DWP’s furry champion of the strivers Just what we needed: Workie, the DWP’s furry champion of the strivers
(about 1 hour later)
Some ideas are so bizarre that thinking about them makes me break out in a film of cold sweat, my heart rate tripling, jaw dropping open in shock. One of them is Workie: the adorable great big furry creature on whom the Department of Work and Pensions has splurged £8.5m of public money. The pensions minister, Ros Altmann, has herself reportedly taken a hand in designing Workie. In a number of television ad spots, lovable Workie has been lumbering around telling small-business owners they must provide staff with workplace pensions, and reminding employees that this is now their legal right. But why is this incredibly irritating creature called Workie? Is it like Wookie, only more joyless? Shouldn’t he be called Pensionie? Or maybe Entitlementie? Humungously cuddly Workie looks as if he is aimed at children – and not very clever children, at that. But careworn grownups may well feel that this outrageously condescending supersized gonk has got nothing to do with the world of work. Workie should really be a stressed, worried and very un-Disney-looking figure: thin, tense, palpably always thinking about problems at the office and juggling childcare. There should be an ad where a member of the public goes up to Workie in a park to ask a question about retirement savings, and Workie snaps and bites this person on the shoulder, like an angry horse. Or maybe we can have a new character called Tax Creditie, a big furry creature who turns up in the audience for BBC Question Time and lets rip with a bestial groan, like Chewbacca, on the subject of welfare cuts hitting strivers. Some ideas are so bizarre that thinking about them makes me break out in a film of cold sweat, my heart rate tripling, jaw dropping open in shock. One of them is Workie: the adorable great big furry creature on whom the Department of Work and Pensions has splurged £8.5m of public money. The pensions minister, Ros Altmann, has herself reportedly taken a hand in designing Workie. In a number of television ad spots, lovable Workie has been lumbering around telling small-business owners they must provide staff with workplace pensions, and reminding employees that this is now their legal right. But why is this incredibly irritating creature called Workie? Is it like Wookiee, only more joyless? Shouldn’t he be called Pensionie? Or maybe Entitlementie? Humungously cuddly Workie looks as if he is aimed at children – and not very clever children, at that. But careworn grownups may well feel that this outrageously condescending supersized gonk has got nothing to do with the world of work. Workie should really be a stressed, worried and very un-Disney-looking figure: thin, tense, palpably always thinking about problems at the office and juggling childcare. There should be an ad where a member of the public goes up to Workie in a park to ask a question about retirement savings, and Workie snaps and bites this person on the shoulder, like an angry horse. Or maybe we can have a new character called Tax Creditie, a big furry creature who turns up in the audience for BBC Question Time and lets rip with a bestial groan, like Chewbacca, on the subject of welfare cuts hitting strivers.
Adventures in time travelAdventures in time travel
There comes a time when we realise life has moved on without us. Next week I am going to the Mumbai film festival; you can’t get rupees in Britain because it’s a restricted currency (you can’t take it in or out of India), and I felt uneasy showing up in a foreign country without local cash. So without thinking about it, I breezed into a bank and asked for “traveller’s cheques”. The entire branch went quiet and a young, besuited man, hardly able to contain his astonished amusement, said: “I’m sorry, sir – what?” It was like going into Halfords and asking for a replacement big wheel for my penny-farthing. Staff started to gather round me, fascinated, doing everything but poking me with their pens. The staff at Boots might react like this if Thomas Cook himself, in his top hat and muttonchop whiskers, had come in asking for six months’ supply of bay rum hair tonic to take with him to the Azores.There comes a time when we realise life has moved on without us. Next week I am going to the Mumbai film festival; you can’t get rupees in Britain because it’s a restricted currency (you can’t take it in or out of India), and I felt uneasy showing up in a foreign country without local cash. So without thinking about it, I breezed into a bank and asked for “traveller’s cheques”. The entire branch went quiet and a young, besuited man, hardly able to contain his astonished amusement, said: “I’m sorry, sir – what?” It was like going into Halfords and asking for a replacement big wheel for my penny-farthing. Staff started to gather round me, fascinated, doing everything but poking me with their pens. The staff at Boots might react like this if Thomas Cook himself, in his top hat and muttonchop whiskers, had come in asking for six months’ supply of bay rum hair tonic to take with him to the Azores.
“Sir, umm, getting traveller’s cheques is very … we’d have to order them.” Instantly, I became grumpy and defensive: I mean, all right, travellers cheques are a bit old-fashioned, but surely you can still get them if you want. Another employee started to talk to me, speaking very slowly and clearly: “Sir, do you have a debit card?” – using the same caring-tactful voice that people use when they ask if you have “access to the internet”. Of course I have a debit card, I snapped. “Well, you can get rupees that way,” – and he did a tiny little mime of someone inserting a card into a cash machine. “They accept sterling and US dollars at the airport,” someone helpfully chipped in. I nodded curtly and left. They’ll be telling me next I can’t buy a postal order for my nephew’s 10th birthday. “Sir, umm, getting traveller’s cheques is very … we’d have to order them.” Instantly, I became grumpy and defensive: I mean, all right, traveller’s cheques are a bit old-fashioned, but surely you can still get them if you want. Another employee started to talk to me, speaking very slowly and clearly: “Sir, do you have a debit card?” – using the same caring-tactful voice that people use when they ask if you have “access to the internet”. Of course I have a debit card, I snapped. “Well, you can get rupees that way,” – and he did a tiny little mime of someone inserting a card into a cash machine. “They accept sterling and US dollars at the airport,” someone helpfully chipped in. I nodded curtly and left. They’ll be telling me next I can’t buy a postal order for my nephew’s 10th birthday.
One-upmanship downerOne-upmanship downer
Now Spectre is out, the next super-big deal is the new Star Wars movie: Episode VII: The Force Awakens, on screens at Christmas. Among film writers it’s time for a new round of one-upmanship about who knows what. Recently I met the chief executive of a major cinema company, and we got talking about Episode VII. “I think it’s looking good, what do you think?” he asked. “Oh the trailer, yes, it does.” I replied earnestly. “No, no,” he said, as if the trailer was something for the laity. “I mean the 15-minute clip.” With slightly bowed head, I conceded that I hadn’t yet seen this impossibly exciting and restricted extract from the new Star Wars film. He smilingly said that it was probably just for exhibitors, not the press. Then he told me that it revealed that Jar-Jar Binks – the much-loathed character introduced in Phantom Menace – was dead, and that there’s a shot of his grave with Jar-Jar’s name on the headstone. With that he moved on. Many more tense disclosures like this are on the way before this film finally arrives.Now Spectre is out, the next super-big deal is the new Star Wars movie: Episode VII: The Force Awakens, on screens at Christmas. Among film writers it’s time for a new round of one-upmanship about who knows what. Recently I met the chief executive of a major cinema company, and we got talking about Episode VII. “I think it’s looking good, what do you think?” he asked. “Oh the trailer, yes, it does.” I replied earnestly. “No, no,” he said, as if the trailer was something for the laity. “I mean the 15-minute clip.” With slightly bowed head, I conceded that I hadn’t yet seen this impossibly exciting and restricted extract from the new Star Wars film. He smilingly said that it was probably just for exhibitors, not the press. Then he told me that it revealed that Jar-Jar Binks – the much-loathed character introduced in Phantom Menace – was dead, and that there’s a shot of his grave with Jar-Jar’s name on the headstone. With that he moved on. Many more tense disclosures like this are on the way before this film finally arrives.