Get a real job…

Esther Mcvey is right to say that teenagers should be encouraged to take Saturday and after-school jobs. Employers often complain that the skills missing aren’t educational but behavioural: time-keeping, good manners, hard work etc. One can probably learn more from working for a few hours in a corner shop than in three years of academic study at Oxford.

Of course, politicians must practise what they preach. Ms Mcvey is doubtless hard-working and “in touch”, but can all MPS say the same? Perhaps they could refresh their own employability by taking up odd jobs, too, such as a paper round? If nothing else, it might keep the corrupt and the adulterous in check.

Appearing on the front page is embarrassing enough, but having to deliver the news personally and by hand would be humiliating.