![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Breaking News
Apr. 3rd, 2013 10:10 amIan Duncan Smith accepts lifestyle challenge.
Stung by press criticism that he has no idea what it is like to live a miserable, lonely life, Government minister Ian Duncan Smith has accepted a challenge to 'live like a Guardian Columnist' for a month. Speaking from a villa in Tuscany, the Work and Pensions secretary said that he had accepted the challenge to demonstrate he understood what it was like to live on the fringes of society, and to experience a life where nobody much cared about you or what you thought.
"I expect the hardest part of the challenge will be the diet of ideas", he said. "Having to subsist on the same cut-price, unappetising pap day after day with little variety.
"I expect it will all be rather bitter as well", he commented between forkfuls of tofu.
He accepted that many Guardian Columnists are forced to subsist on as little as a hundred thousand pounds a year, although some supplement their income by writing black-market opinion pieces for the New Statesman and appearing on Question Time. "I'm not saying it's an easy life", admitted Mr Duncan Smith. "Whilst there are some high-profile cases of people on 'Guardian', as it is called, taking home as much as four hundred thousand a year, many at lower levels have to make do with a quarter of that. Possibly less.
"Even so, I dispute that living on 'Guardian' is a "Living hell" as some have described it. Many people use their time in the Guardian system to develop skills or do volunteer and community work, and go on to find fulfilling and worthwhile employment. It is these people who I really wish to support."
"Another glass of chianti?", he added. "Don't mind if I do."
Stung by press criticism that he has no idea what it is like to live a miserable, lonely life, Government minister Ian Duncan Smith has accepted a challenge to 'live like a Guardian Columnist' for a month. Speaking from a villa in Tuscany, the Work and Pensions secretary said that he had accepted the challenge to demonstrate he understood what it was like to live on the fringes of society, and to experience a life where nobody much cared about you or what you thought.
"I expect the hardest part of the challenge will be the diet of ideas", he said. "Having to subsist on the same cut-price, unappetising pap day after day with little variety.
"I expect it will all be rather bitter as well", he commented between forkfuls of tofu.
He accepted that many Guardian Columnists are forced to subsist on as little as a hundred thousand pounds a year, although some supplement their income by writing black-market opinion pieces for the New Statesman and appearing on Question Time. "I'm not saying it's an easy life", admitted Mr Duncan Smith. "Whilst there are some high-profile cases of people on 'Guardian', as it is called, taking home as much as four hundred thousand a year, many at lower levels have to make do with a quarter of that. Possibly less.
"Even so, I dispute that living on 'Guardian' is a "Living hell" as some have described it. Many people use their time in the Guardian system to develop skills or do volunteer and community work, and go on to find fulfilling and worthwhile employment. It is these people who I really wish to support."
"Another glass of chianti?", he added. "Don't mind if I do."
