Dec 2009 03

Some West Midlands non-jobs…13

As you know, at the TPA we have our weekly ‘Non-job of the week’, but here are a couple of our very own West Midlands non-jobs, as advertised by our local councils. And if there ever was any doubt that we’ve evolved too far, check out these two vacancies and ponder how we ever survived without them.

First off we have Coventry City Council who are currently hiring for the role of ‘Healthy Weight Facilitator’(£23,708 – £29,236 pa). The job description itself only serves to embellish upon the absurdity Fatgym this title suggests by plainly stating that this ‘facilitator’ is needed to join ‘the Coventry healthy weight team’ (images of spandex, smiles and hi-fives…), who apparently work to support ‘weight management initiatives across Coventry’. Well, it certainly comes to something when such basic bodily norms like eating and moving require an official co-ordinator sanctioned by the state – “it doesn’t matter how you want your body to look, that’s for us to decide”. Those of you who’d quite like to enjoy a drink, cigarette or maybe a burger in the full knowledge you might not live quite as long as salad-eating gym-goers – be prepared to have that option stripped away!

Will there come a time when we’re all measured and penalties issued to those who fall short of the government mandated ‘ideal’? Who knows, but residents in Coventry might want to lay off the chocolates and turkey sandwiches this Christmas lest the health police track them down.

Similarly intrusive but ultimately more depressing is Stoke-on-Trent’s advert for a Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Officer, which must be the hiring equivalent of sticking an elastoplast on a shell wound. It makes you wonder if even the people who invented such a role believe themselves that this jobsworth is the solution to the teenage pregnancy epidemic – surely no-one could be that deluded…?

Rather than being trained to spot promiscuous under-16s at a glance, the Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Officer (…must be strange to exist only to stop people being born…) will – you guessed it – educate, inform, engage, etc etc. In short, this is just another unnecessary mediator’s role. Someone to point to condoms, pass over the number of the nearest family planning clinic, indulge the tempers of angry children and take almost £30k from the public purse. Pregchavs

Kids are bombarded with this sort of information these days, it could even be that it’s because of the constant nannying intervention of authorities that teenagers are increasingly choosing to rebel and get pregnant in the first place! Whatever the case, most young people these days have got a pretty good idea that the ‘powers that be’ would rather they didn’t give birth aged twelve, in the same way as we’d all rather they stopped stabbing one another. Perhaps to next role to recruit for would be a Teenage Knife Crime Prevention Officer…? At the very least, as the former position involves such huge amounts of duplication, the council could combine these two roles and give the taxpayer a break.

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  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p0120a6361010970b burn

    Ha ha ha ‘Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Officer’. I’ve heard it all now. It doesn’t get any better than that. Its the word ‘Officer’ that does it. What does the job entail, climbing up peoples drainpipes and issuing Penalty Charge notices to the offending couples. Following young couples home from the Cinema and sternly warning them about birth control. Actually, it probably does, come to think of it.

  • Brian

    You’d need to employ five hundred and thirty five thousand teenage pregnancy prevention officers to equal the cost of the bonuses proposed for RBS staff.
    Of course, there’s one big difference: all those teenage pregnancy officers might prevent a few pregnancies and the consequent benefit payments, while the RBS staff nobly drove the company into the ground before piling the risk onto taxpayers.
    Funny there’s no mention of that issue on the site. But don’t worry, you just carry on slagging off people who have jobs you don’t even begin to understand.

  • Nam

    “Those of you who’d quite like to enjoy a drink, cigarette or maybe a burger in the full knowledge you might not live quite as long as salad-eating gym-goers – be prepared to have that option stripped away! ”
    Is it better to eat/drink/smoke excessively (all of these things point to long term health problems like Diabetes, Liver cirrhosis and Cancer) and pay hundreds of thousands of pounds a year (out of my taxes) to look after these people in the future, or is it better to spend £30k a year now to encourage those who take these to excess to moderate their behaviour?
    And I thought you were meant to be trying to save my money. Or are you just interested in cheap gimmicks?

  • publicservant

    Corporate Communications Manager, English Heritage
    A short spell at Hampstead & Highgate Express
    Political communications company
    Worked on the floor of an auction house
    Worked for a life assurance company in between breaks from university
    Pretend and / or junior jobs. And in total the joint experience of the Taxpayers Alliance research department. Hence the simplistic data-trawling dressed up as news that eminates from them on the ‘public sector’, which none of them have any experience of. Back to the university debating societies chaps.

  • ClimateChange Isn’tManMade

    Poor old Brian, having to fork-out his money to pay for those people who actually enjoy living.
    I’m sick of hearing such liberal minded rhetoric from sandal wearing, planet saving morons. Get a life, you sad man!
    Remember who actually pays more into the NHS… yes, it’s a majority of those smokers and hard-workers who pay their taxes!

  • marycurran

    I think a better and cheaper solution is to bring back the nuns and issue all teenagers with chastity belts.

  • nigel hastilow

    The officers most responsible for reducing teenage pregnancies are surely more widely known as “parents”.

  • DavidC

    I predict taxpayer funded trips to China for these ‘officers’, to see first hand how they do it there.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p0120a6361010970b burn

    I truly give up hope when I see people defending the nanny state, by taking cheap shots at the taxpayers alliance. Everybody KNOWS its better not to eat burgers, smoke, and drink beer. But can people not see the logical conclusion to this dismantling of personal choice, by the state, all in the name of ‘prevention’. Read a few dystopian novels, before its too late.
    And if the government were really serious about addressing the root cause of teenage pregancy, drinking, smoking, dysfunctional families, drug dependence, they would acknowledge that at the root of most of these issues is the creeping influence of the corporation. Longer hours, no pensions, lower pay, higher cost of living, higher mortages, over population, the end of manufacturing in the UK, forcing both parents to work sometimes several jobs, just to ensure a mediocre existence. And when the corporations collapse, largely through their own greed, the state supports them, at the expense of its own people. THATS why people are leading hand to mouth/unhealthy existences, and no amount of meddling will resolve this.

  • Rothbard

    I eat burgers, smoke the odd cuban cigar and drink far too much malt whisky. Its called living my life as a free man. It is my choice and I pay for these pleasures through the fruits of my labour in voluntary exchange with others.
    I have enough tax extorted from me each year to pay for several junior doctors and a ward full of nurses. (Not to mention a good amount of moat cleaning and a duck house or two)
    There are two distinct and important points here, efficiency and legitimacy:
    1. You can’t change human nature by employing state parasites to lecture to people. It is a waste of money because it doesn’t work. (Efficiency)
    2. The role of the state should be restricted to law enforcement and defence. Everything else is an infringement of the rights of the individual. (Legitimacy)
    On both grounds these non jobs are unjustified.

  • PaulF

    So, what seems to be missing is some comment or link to your cheaper solution? obesity and unplanned pregnancies are big issues, both posts sound useful and in the big picture will be money savers.
    As for the strange photo of teenage mums, says more about your weird world view than their lifestyles…

  • Dene Bebbington

    I’d love to know how they intend to measure the success of the sprog preventer. Even if they compare teenage pregnancy rates from one year to the next you can’t necessarily ascribe a reduction to this role.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p0120a6361010970b burn

    Cheaper solution Paul F? Stop giving houses to 18 year old kids who see having a baby as the only viable career choice. Bring back manufacturing in the UK so that working class people can earn sensible money and not depend on the state. On the subject of obesity, make sure both parents aren’t having to work a 50-60 hour working week just to pay the mortgage, then perhaps they will have some time to chop up carrots and the like. Everything, everything, is down to the rule of the Corporation and the gradual erosion of ordinary working hours and the removal of proper work for ordinary people in the first world economies. No amount of meddling council initiatives are going to address what is actually a tidal wave of social problems associated with supercapitalism.