TOP prize for the most offensive response to the Coalition’s swingeing cuts in public services, must surely go to Manchester-based Tangerine PR.
They have come up with the grandly-named ‘Tangerine Outsource’ – best described as “How we aim to cash-in when councils are forced to cut their budgets”.
Tangerine PR, it is claimed in their press statement, has “a proven track record of self-managed communication campaign delivery within the public sector”. Apparently, they find this work “extremely rewarding”.
I’ll bet they do.
So, after your local cash-strapped council has sacked all its communications staff and press officers, why not hire Tangerine to fill the gap?
They would like to “help” public sector organisations get round the cuts. How very thoughtful and public-spirited. Nothing in it for them, of course.
There are so many things wrong with this cynical ploy, from its breathtaking insensitivity, to the ungrammatical first sentence of their crude pitch, to their cod anxiety about local councils being denied the opportunity to “prove their value”, that its difficult to know where to start.
But try this: In David Cameron’s brave new world, Tangerine PR may call this ‘seizing an opportunity’. I call it shameful.
Do they really have to rely for business on swooping down on other people’s jobs? Is this what Cameron meant by the Big Society in action?
Let us hope that any public sector organisation worth its salt treats Tangerine PR’s brazen overture with the contempt it so richly deserves.
Let us hope too, that Tangerine PR’s MD Sandy Lindsay never finds herself languishing in the dole queue, while her former colleagues pick over the bones of her once glittering career.
I’m sure that would leave a very bitter taste.
