Selfridges under fire after selling T-shirt with slogan mocking the unemployed
POSH department store Selfridges sparked outrage by selling a T-shirt with a slogan mocking the jobless.
The offending top features the words: “Nothing pays as good as unemployment feels.”
Each one costs £55 — more than half the £90.50 someone out of work gets to live on for the week.
Furious politicians hit out at the slogan on the tops, available online and at Selfridges’ flagship London store in Oxford Street.
And after The Sun on Sunday asked Selfridges for an explanation, bosses withdrew them from sale.
Beforehand, former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith had fumed: “It is an insult and in poor taste — both to those trying to get off benefits and taxpayers.
“Why don’t they do a T-shirt saying, ‘Nothing feels as good as that first pay cheque you earned yourself’? It is not a joke. Selfridges should bin them.”
Labour’s David Blunkett, Work and Pensions Secretary under PM Tony Blair, also slammed the tops.
Lord Blunkett declared: “It seems to me as though someone has completely lost their marbles.
“Perhaps a taste of unemployment might bring them up to speed.”
The T-shirts were dreamt up by the US fashion brand Praying, hailed by Vogue as “the fashion industry’s most perverse viral hit”.
The slogan is a take on the controversial 2009 quote by model Kate Moss, who was accused of encouraging eating disorders when she said “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”.
Praying did not respond to requests for a comment.
Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to cut £5billion from the soaring welfare budget by getting more people off sickness benefits and back to work.