In the wake of the TaxPayers’ Alliance inadvertently attracting media attention for their “non-job” of the week - as advertised by Sandwell Council - another job of ambiguous merit has surfaced on the Coventry City Council website…
Community Lifestyle Coach
£22,293 - £27,492pa
A physical activity professional, you will work on the successful ‘One Body One Life’ programme. You will work with families to provide individualised physical activity support and deliver safe physical activity programmes within communities. Excellent communication, negotiation and motivation skills together with a sport or health degree will be essential.
The ‘One Body One Life’ programme is a taxpayer funded to drive to provide an ‘obesity and sedentary behaviour programme for Coventry children, young people and families’ – i.e. those who cannot be trusted must be supervised by the state.
On this programme the rest of us get to pay for ‘intervention’:
…an intensive 12 week course for families where one or more members are obese. An individualized health plan will be produced with the family to encourage ongoing small changes to improve healthy eating and physical activity levels. This will be supported by a weekly group healthy eating workshop and a weekly group physical activity session.
The intervention is also flanked by ‘prevention’ and ‘activities’ (only open to those who tip the scales of course) all in aid of keeping people in Coventry slimmer and, of course, over-taxed.
The taxpayer already shells out huge amounts of money for the NHS to treat obese people and now some are paying out for these ‘intervention’ courses at a local government level too – and if the salary of this lifestyle coach is anything to go by this stuff doesn’t come cheap!
It is not Coventry City Council’s job to make sure the citizens of Coventry aren’t obese and it isn’t the taxpayers’ responsibility to fund the salaries of ‘lifestyle coaches’. Those who have weight problems are free to join a gym or consult their doctors, and if the council cut-out programmes like this and lowered council taxes then more might be able to afford to take their own action.