Call someone on benefits a scrounger? The Mail is shocked!

There's something for everyone here at Five Chinese Crackers, and today there'll be some pointing and laughing at the Daily Mail.  Hurrah!

Following last month's outrage about Phil Woolas making racist smears about Muslims in his election literature, today, the story on the left is being linked to from the front page.

''Get a job you scrounger!' Woman bus driver's extraordinary rant at passenger on crutches' says the headline, giving us the vital information we need to know about the driver's gender, as well as the story showing us a picture of the sweary nan from Catherine Tate because that's what she was like, apparently, and telling us:

The woman driver told road accident victim John Frier: 'Oi you with the crutch you've got to move!' before adding: 'Get a job you scrounger!'

Get a job you scrounger?  Wherever might this woman have got the idea that disabled people might be scroungers who should get a job?

You know what's coming, right?

Scroll down the page a bit and there's this:

Search the Mail for 'disability benefit cheat' and you get 38 stories, including 'More than £1BILLION lost to disability benefit fraud and error - and that's just the tip of the iceberg' and last week's 'The sick man of Europe: UK tops chart for number of young people off work claiming incapacity benefit'.  Another highlight on the site is 'Red card for benefit scrounger who refereed 40 football matches... while claiming he couldn't walk'.

Happily, commenters seem to have spotted this.  Top rated comment:

Here are a couple of the 'other commenters' Sue is talking about:

I like Paxos from Beeston best.

What do you think, are hacks at the Mail remarkably unaware of the content of their own paper, or do the do this sort of stuff as flamebait?

(I use istyosty here so the Mail shouldn't get any hits from anyone who clicks the links.  Nice that.  Just don't get distracted by the shiny right hand column about celebrities' bums).