With thanks to the delightful @IanCuddy for bringing this to my attention…

Basically, it would appear that a “high profile public sector organization” is looking for a web editor, as evidenced by an advert on a particular job site. For this post, certain skills are essential — you need to understand the internet, HTML, be able to check content against standards and for accuracy, have experience of writing for the web, as well as having good communication skills.

They also list certain things as desirable: while I may not have the Information Management degree, I think it’s fair to say I’ve significant experience of Web 2.0, of blogging, of using web applications and so on. While I don’t currently have security clearance, I can’t imagine that this would be a major problem, as so far as I’m aware I’ve never been a member of a terrorist organisation, and I think I would probably have noticed.

So there you go. All stuff that I could probably do in my sleep, for which they are offering between £140 per day and £1140 per day. Mind you, it is in London, and £1140 per week isn’t really that…

…hang on… £1140 per day? That can’t be right, surely.

It can’t be right on oh so many levels. Firstly, there’s the fact that they’ve had to go through an employment agency — surely it can’t be difficult to find someone willing to work for five and a half grand per week? Heck, even I’d be prepared to relocate to London for three months on that basis…

But I rather suspect that this is some form of error. For a start, they’ve not contacted me to offer me the job, which would have saved them all the tedious business of advertising, and secondly because of the sheer nonsense value. At a time when the public sector is facing one of the biggest financial squeezes and pay freezes that it has for some time — and having spent a good while working in the public sector, I’ve seen ‘em before — it surely cannot be true that any public sector organisation is prepared to pay a web editor the equivalent of £300,000 per year.

Admittedly, it’s only a three-month contract, so you’re only looking at seventy five grand — but that’s still the equivalent of three hundred grand per year for a web editor. And surely no public sector organisation would be prepared to waste that degree of public money when they have no need to. Or, if they are prepared to do so, I hope to hell that they can justify that sort of expenditure to the public, when it’s plainly not necessary to find someone capable of doing the job.

Hey, if they wanted to approach TPIS, I’m sure I could provide the services they’re looking for at, well, let’s just say cheaper than that. The equivalent of three hundred grand for a web editor can’t be right, can it? Surely no public sector/governmental body would be so out of touch with the real world that they would be prepared to spend that sort of money when they have no need to do so.

It can’t be right, can it?

Obviously, if you’re working for that particular public sector organisation, and you happen to know better, then do let me know. Or let them know where to find me