Zero-hours jobs stink – whatever you call them

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/19/zero-hours-jobs-stink-whatever-you-call-them

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Great news: everyone can stop worrying about nasty, unfair zero-hours contracts because Iain Duncan Smith has rebranded them and made them sound nice. The Conservative work and pensions secretary thinks that the phrase “zero-hours contracts” is too negative, and wants to replace it with “flexible hours”. Did you see what he did there? It’s even better than Esther McVey’s “enabling hours”.

Some have suggested that this is the Tories’ “Marie Antoinette moment”, with lots of blather about lack of employee rights. (Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna has accused Duncan Smith of “trying to dress up insecurity as flexibility”.) But there will always be moody people trying to put everyone on a downer.

This could herald a bright new world of calling bad, unfair stuff by fun, upbeat names to make everything seem OK. Someone just mentioned to me that such rebranding sounded “Orwellian” – jeez, again with the moaning minnies! It makes you realise what brave, positive-thinking Duncan Smith has to put up with. He can’t be expected to do it all on his own – we need to work together.

Where you detect a reeking stench of social injustice, don’t whinge, ask pertinent questions, point out unfairness or try to stick up for yourself or others – just spray some rebranding air freshener around and inhale deeply on that synthetic sense of calm.

First things first: we should think up other cool names for zero-hours contracts, so that Duncan Smith and McVey have the tools they need when they next sit on newsroom sofas. How about “paid chillax-ing”, “flexi-toiling”, “sexy serfdom”? What’s more, it would probably be best if people stopped pretending to be adult individuals, who deserve respect, autonomy, a living wage and at least enough job security to know that they actually have a job and aren’t just being placed on and off a conveyor belt as and when a giant invisible hand sees fit.

To this end, working adults should be rebranded as annoying children. They should be forced to don identical monochrome BabyGros and skip through the streets to work (rebranded the “playpen”), licking lollipops laced with sedatives, while the old Andy Pandy theme tune is played through a vast, connected public monitor system.

Benefits could be rebranded as “free sweeties” and the state renamed the “cookie jar”, because grasping poor people are always trying to dip into it. Bosses should be rebranded as “overlord mummies and daddies”, while unions would be renamed “toxic babysitters” and vaporised. Those who refuse to frolic, and object to the powerlessness and infantilisation, should be thrown into jail (rebranded “the naughty step”). Bad, naughty children who will never learn! Put their heads in cages and have Duncan Smith bite their faces. Oh dear, hang on a minute.

Please accept my apology for that power-crazed, inhumane outburst, which I would like to rebrand as harmless whimsy.

Perhaps this would be a good time to recover myself and outline why so many people find zero-hours contracts unfair, the short answer being that, usually, they are unfair. While a modicum of flexibility suits some people – students who need to study, people with other jobs – the system is rigged in the employer’s favour, to the point where any notion of mutual benefit becomes risible.

The majority of zero-hours workers are on minimum wages, have next to no rights, nor any control over their working hours, while often being saddled with exclusivity clauses that stops them seeking work elsewhere. That’s why the Labour party have hit such a nerve by focusing on the present unfair zero-hours situation. Put bluntly, the much-trumpeted “flexibility” is a one-way street. The next time Duncan Smith sits on a newsroom sofa, perhaps he should cut out the rebranding baloney and just say: let them eat cake.

More power to Paltrow for her diet

Gwyneth Paltrow has failed to complete the $29 (£19) a week food-shop challenge, devised by chef Mario Batali in an effort to raise money and awareness for the New York City food bank.

The $29 represents the food stamps received by American families on welfare. Gwynnie lasted four days, splurging her budget on fresh limes, parsley and coriander, leaving some to observe that she hadn’t got the hang of “poor person food shopping”. When Paltrow “personally broke”, she tucked into some chicken and vegetables and half a bag of liquorice.

Not everyone’s idea of a crazed bender, but, in fairness, Paltrow was hitched to Coldplay’s Chris Martin, so that half bag of liquorice could have been her version of hanging out with Led Zeppelin in 1977.

Anyway, good for Paltrow. She might have failed, but at least she failed well – in as honest, high profile and sane way as possible, which is all you can do in her position. It could have been worse – she could have gone to a market, po-faced style, bought some cheap veg and made a huge vat of peasant soup. She could have then opined about how everyone should make her wonderfully nutritious, cost-effective broth and stop whining about being poor.

“Just make my soup,” she could have trilled smugly. “It will sustain you for the week.” And the following week, and every week after that, for all eternity.

Instead, Paltrow lunged for the liquorice and expressed sympathy for anybody trying to survive on food stamps. Memo to all celebrities who participate in similar awareness-raising projects about attempting to survive on tight budgets: the only moral option is to not only fail, but to fail spectacularly, as anyone in normal life would do.

Why Star Wars fans are tearing their hair out

Carrie Fisher has revealed that the renowned Princess Leia side-buns hairstyle will not return in the forthcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The hairstyle that inspired idiots all over the world to clamp rolls, croissants or other appropriately sized baked goods to the side of their heads is no more.

This has resulted in wails of dismay from Star Wars fans of a certain vintage, whose undying love for Leia’s hair-do could never be sated by the Star Wars hair It boy, Chewbacca – a mythical beast composed of a combination of stuff you occasionally need to clear out of the plughole of the bath and fluff from Steven Seagal’s navel.

Come to think of it, this is a bit odd. Everything and everyone else from the old Star Wars films seems to be being brought back for The Force Awakens, so why have the side-buns been dropped? It’s akin to not allowing Mark Hamill near a lightsaber.

More pressingly, how could any other Leia hairstyle hope to compete with the celebrated buns? Let’s hope that Fisher doesn’t feel compelled to do something truly drastic, such as wear the entire Kardashian clan on her head.