FANCY it? There’s a nice little earner going spare at £35 grand a year as a “worklessness co-ordinator” with one local authority in Yorkshire.

If that doesn’t suit then just down the road in Lancashire, the county council is looking for a myth busting project manager at £30,000. Apparently it’s got something to do with researching community attitudes into migrants.

Now that Gordon Brown has forced the “c” word from his lips, these are just a couple of examples of where he might start cutting public expenditure.

No wonder the Brothers were up in arms about public sector cuts at their annual conference last week. Thousands of trade union members fill these non-jobs.

When politicians talk about the need to rein back public spending, it’s not front line workers — nurses, binmen, etc — who should come under the microscope, but the vast army of bureaucrats and jobsworths holding bizarre titles that have something vaguely to do with the modern day fascination with health and safety, diversity, equality and the rest of it.

Since 1997 there has been a 50 per cent. increase in the number of people employed by unelected quangos. Spending has gone up from £49 million to an obscene £130 million. In 1997 there were 3,300 council staff earning more than £50,000 a year. Now there are 38,000 of them and the number of council bosses earning more than £100,000 has doubled in just three years.

The Government has presided over a vast expansion of the public sector. I’m willing to wager that, if it slashed half those jobs, we, the general public, the taxpayers, would not be deprived of too many essential services.

The chief executive of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, Matthew Elliott, drew a rather pertinent analogy this week when he said: “Britain is not Woolworths. We can’t keep running up huge deficits until it all comes tumbling down and we relaunch on-line.”

It’s high time Britain’s clipboard army was cut down to size. Before whichever party wins power at the next election and starts chopping money from schools and hospitals, they should look at the huge waste some of these bizarre posts create.

For a start it wouldn’t do worklessness co-ordinators and their ilk any harm to try looking for a proper job for a change.

OI, YOU’RE NO HOY

NOT much point in bringing in legislation to allow cyclists to ride the wrong way down one-way streets — most of them flout the rules of the road now.

Government advisers say motorists should be legally responsible for all accidents involving cyclists, even if they are not to blame. Cycling England, funded by the Transport Department, wants the civil laws changing so that drivers or their insurers would automatically be liable for compensation claims.

I am not against cyclists. Cycling has many potential benefits for health and the environment. I am only against those arrogant bike riders who think they own not only the roads, but also the pavements and who think crashing red lights, going up one-way streets and intimidating pedestrians is all part of the fun and freedom that two wheels gives them.

Driving around the Lake District I am amazed that there have not been more accidents involving mountain bikers, often riding three and four abreast, who seem to think the roads and pavements are part of the countryside.

Something laddish seems to get into them when they set off on their hired bikes, bumping on and off the pavements, turning left or right without any advance warning, and scattering pedestrians. A bit too much of the “Oi, Hoy, race you!” mentality methinks.

Motorists aren’t free of blame when it comes to the way they treat cyclists. I have seen some close calls where drivers seemed to ignore the presence of bikes.

But putting cyclists above the law is not going to help. Cyclists need to understand that they have responsibilities, too. The doubtless well paid officers of Cycling England, yet another quango incidentally, should be advised to get on their bikes until they can come up with something more sensible to say.

FESTIVE MEANIES

PEOPLE always complain that shops start selling their Christmas stuff too early. There’s now a group calling itself The Movement for the Containment of Christmas which claims to be fighting back—rather stupidly as it happens by glueing the lock of a charity shop.

I’m with Noddy Holder. I wish it could be Christmas every day if it meant folk following the old Derek Batey “be nice to each other” Mr. and Mrs. theme.

Plenty of wise shoppers start buying for Christmas in January to spread the cost. Why not? Let’s just accept that it’s one great commercial enterprise and get on with life without all this wittering. And if councils want to put up their lights in the middle of summer who cares?

A survey by Asda has found that one in 10 of us won’t be sending any Christmas cards this year. Is it really all about being hard up or are we turning into a nation of meanies? The sort of meanies whose lives are so empty that they go round glueing shop doorways for their kicks.

NOT A GAME TO DIE FOR

ONE of cricketer Freddie Flintoff’s colleagues said of him “he’d die for his country if he had to.”

Credit to Freddie, who has been to Afghanistan on a morale-boosting trip for the troops. He is probably more aware than the person who made that ill-judged remark that it’s only cricket and dying for your country is what hundreds of soldiers risk daily every time they put a foot outside their compound.

Sport, where money collides with greed, needs a bit of image repair these days. In fact the dictionary definition of “sporting” — behaving in a fair and decent way — seems to have got lost in a morass of cheating, money grabbing, lies and duplicity.

The irresponsibility of footballers, the twisted anger on the faces of fans, rugby’s “bloodgate,” deliberate crashing in a Grand Prix, drug taking, petty disagreements.

Freddie Flintoff is probably set for an arthritic old age after pounding his burly frame into the ground, but at least he should come away with his legs, which is more than can be said for some of the young men playing a much tougher battle on foreign soil.

Sport has got completely out of context with real life. Great trivialities blown out of all proportion. Hopefully Freddie sees that and can spread the message to some of his misguided fellow sporting idols.

THE EXTRA MILE

SOME old-fashioned sporting ethos still exists. It was there at the weekend when long distance runners from the Commonwealth competed in the first mountain running and ultra distance championships in Keswick. The “friendly event” they called it.

Women’s 24-hour race winner Sharon Gayter, aged 45, is asthmatic and suffered a bout during the night. She could not find her inhaler pump. One of the officials from a rival national team gave her theirs and Sharon went on to run a personal best, a few feet short of 139 miles. Talk about going the extra mile.