You couldn't make it up - the unemployed in Southwark really have been invited on an Easter egg hunt by their local Job Centre

I thought this article in the Daily Mail might have been a belated April Fool when I first read it.

But it would appear to be completely true: organised by JobCentre Plus contractor, Skills Training Centre UK, 150 unemployed people in the London Borough of Southwark have been invited to take part in a hunt for chocolate Easter eggs on Wednesday.

And the 35 eagle-eyed participants who find the eggs will apparently discover prizes inside, including job application forms and vouchers to buy clothes for interviews.

How can they justify this? Apart from the whole stunt being frivolous in the extreme, since when has qualifying to apply for jobs been turned into a lottery?

The person who organised the event says that it will be "fun" - although the jobless in Southwark who the Mail caught up with preferred to use the words "humiliating" and "insulting".

Yet the scheme appears to have the Whitehall seal of approval, with a DWP spokesman quoted as saying they always encourage "innovative ways of addressing unemployment".

Shadow DWP Secretary Theresa May is clear that such capers would not be happening on her watch, and is describing the event as a "cheap gimmick":

 "This would be laughable if it wasn't so serious. [DWP Secretary] James Purnell is quite clearly sleepwalking his way through this unemployment crisis if he thinks this is the solution to getting people back to work."

A final thought on this from me: how come someone hasn't intervened to suggest that holding such an event based around a Christian festival was "culturally insensitive"?