This morning’s Telegraph excelled itself in the idiocy stakes. The headline on the story about the government’s Future Jobs Fund announcement was dripping with the kind of sneering philistine right-wing pomposity we will probably have to live with for the next half-decade. “£1bn scheme to create ‘soft jobs” screamed the “hamper” story across the top of the front page. This scheme was first announced in the Budget, but the first tranche of 47,000 jobs, mainly created in local authorities was announced by Peter Mandelson and Yvette Cooper today.
Examples of “soft jobs” given by the Telegraph included “dance assistants, tourism ambasadors and solar panel engineers”. The paper quotes Susie Squire of the Taxpayers’ Alliance saying: “Soft jobs like these would be indulgent even in good economic times let alone in the current climate.”
This evolved from an earlier version of the story, still available on the web, which included in the soft catagory “forestry workers, loft laggers and child carers”, all of which sound like pretty tough jobs to me, certainly compared to “Daily Telegraph senior headline writer ” or “mouthpiece for the Taxpayers’ Alliance”.
So what would a “hard job” be in this mad universe.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in