Zero Tolerance
Private Eye - the UK's best and only fortnightly satirical magazine - has a hugely funny article on zero-hour contracts in its regular HP Sauce column - hugely funny and yet highly political at the same time.
"There was embarrassment for Ed Miliband when it was revealed that his own local council was employing almost 3,000 workers of zero-hour contracts after the Labour leader and Doncaster North MP called for such contracts to be outlawed.
The story, following a series of freedom of information requests from International Business Times, was manna from heaven to Tory columnists and bloggers everywhere, quoting 2,759 on zero-hour contracts, putting Doncaster right at the top of local government's zero-hours league table, well ahead of second placed Denbighshire with 1,630 and light years ahead of other councils which averaged around 400.
However, that ignored Donny's own special brand of ineptitude - for the council now says it misread the FoI request and included in its figures the hundreds of people who had worked just one day for the elections and school supply staff who have specific short-term contracts. Red-faced chief executive Jo Miller said Donny actually employs a maximum of 300 relief staff on zero-hour type contracts.
It is still something for Miliband to look into - or maybe he could pass on to his parliamentary assistant Kevin Rodgers, who is also a councillor in Doncaster."
Now a few things struck me after reading this piece:
1 League tables are a good thing - they give ordinary people useful information that public bureaucrats would rather withhold
2 The fuss about zero-hour contracts is one thing - but why is there no fuss about school support staff many of whom have have term-time only contracts - while teachers have all year round contracts?
3 Private Eye does a priceless job in exposing the shameless behaviour and hypocrisy of politicians
