A sob story about long term unemployed jobseekers offered work experience placements as Diamond Jubilee stewards being badly treated was too good to miss for the media elite of the left. Frustrated by the widespread support for the Queen exhibited by millions of ordinary people and uncomfortable with the sight of so many union flags being waved the Guardian and BBC jumped with glee into the issue using anonymous sources to buttress accusations of “slave labour”
Unsurprisingly it was also picked up in the USA by the left wing agitprop website Gawker.
Rather than do some real journalism to find out if other stewards embedded in the scheme shared a similar negative experience the Guardian hacks looked around to see if there was any dim witted pompous windbag who could be wound up and propelled into the media spotlight to give the story political legs.
They needed a pea brained dim-witted has been who would be obtuse enough to pontificate loudly and aggressively without bothering to do any homework
Enter John Prescott
They then needed a highly paid and extremely wealthy member of the soft left media elite to highlight the wages of the people who ran the Jubilee Stewards project and to then try to sandbag one of them on BBC Newsnight.
Enter Kirsty Wark
The trouble with anonymous sources, however, is that it is always difficult to validate the truth of their statements by referencing their backgrounds and checking their claims under hostile cross examination so when several fellow stewards went public with their experiences while offering up their names the BBC/Guardianistas should have been delighted.
Unfortunately these people said their experience had been positive and questioned the accuracy of the Prescott/Wark line.
Isn’t it annoying how facts can so often spoil a good left wing fantasy…