Richard Littlejohn dedicated the main part of
his column on Tuesday to moaning about
'council non-jobs':
For the past 20-odd years, this column has made a decent living documenting the insanity and waste in Britain’s Town Halls.
That's an admission that he has been churning out the same old stuff for
two decades. He said much the same
on 21 September last year:
For the past 15 years, this column has made a good living out of elf 'n' safety.
His second sentence is equally telling:
If all else failed, there was always the Guardian jobs pages on a Wednesday to dig me out of a hole.
Quality investigative journalism there. In any case, who'd be so silly as to advertise in
that newspaper?
(Read some of the applications for the above
here and
here)
Littlejohn then launches into a tirade against
'non-jobs', including such claims as:
These days, ‘climate change’ is the new Aids.
Yet, as
Primly Stable has pointed out, regular readers of Littlejohn might recognise a lot of this, as he's said much of it before.
For example, he first mentioned
'community walking co-ordinators' on
18 August 2009, then put it in his 2010 book
Littlejohn's House of Fun. They got another mention when the book was serialised in the Mail on
28 March 2010 and once again on Tuesday.
Once again on Tuesday in a column about people being paid lots of money for doing pointless jobs
...
But one of Littlejohn's claims really stands out:
Haringey hired someone to give hopscotch lessons to Asian women.
Did they really?
Full Fact gives its verdict:
Back in 1995, former Conservative Party Chairman Brian Mawhinney regaled his Party’s Conference with a story of how taxpayer’s money was being similarly spent on hopscotch for Asian women.
In fact, it later transpired that the public money had been given to the Hopscotch Asian Women’s Centre, a well-respected voluntary organisation that deals with domestic violence, language and integration issues in Camden, which neighbours Haringey.
So could a similar misunderstanding have been made by Richard Littlejohn?
We contacted Hanringey Borough Council to ask about the mysterious job, who weren’t aware of one fitting Mr Littlejohn’s description. We’ve also tried to get in touch with Mr Littlejohn himself to find out more about how he came across this vacancy, but have yet to hear back from him.
But the Hopscotch Asian Women's Centre did advertise for a management position in May last year.
So whilst as yet we’re unable to say with complete certainty that Haringey haven’t been engaging the services of Asian hopscotch specialists, given the claim’s history and the proximity of an Asian women’s voluntary centre named Hopscotch to Haringey, you might be advised to treat this particular “non-job” with some scepticism.