How to fill in a slow news day

What do you do when you're a crusading newspaper reporter, and there's nothing to crusade against? Well, if you work for the Mail on Sunday, you manufacture a bogus story. First, you artistically create a headline to catch the reader's attention . . . like this one:

After years of working for free, Down's syndrome man must PAY to wash councillors' dishes

Then, having arrested their notice from the scantily dressed starlets and fringe royals down the side of the page, you then build on the headline with carefully crafted misdirection:

A Down's syndrome man and Special Olympics champion who has been working for free for years is now being charged a fee to wash councillors' dishes.

Good. You've reinforced the message in the headline, so you can assume that the lazy reader will skim past the essential information in the next sentence:

Virgil Taylor has been helping to wash up, wipe tables and set up trolleys in a restaurant used by town hall staff for 17 years as part of subsidised adult care services.

Note the extra careful phrasing here: part of subsidised adult care services. It encourages you to read that as if Mr. Taylor is a volunteer for that program, in spite of his own disabilities. Now we move on to another delicate piece of misdirection:

Every week Mr Taylor - who won a gold medal at the Special Olympics in Glasgow in 2005 - has attended 10 sessions run by the William Knowles Centre in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

But now savage cuts have ended the subsidies and the 34-year-old will have to pay £2.50 per session for the 'privilege' of cleaning up after councillors.

You are now aware that Mr. Taylor is a Special Oympian, a gold medal winner, no less, which makes it seem to be even more unfair that he's being charged money to be allowed to help out, right?

Now, we can bring in the outraged parent who sums things up nicely:

His outraged mother Joan, of Winscombe, said: 'Virgil does not get paid for his time at the Town Hall. But I would never stop him going as it makes him feel useful and he is so proud when he puts his uniform on.

'He does this for nothing but he loves it and that is the most important thing.

'How and why should he pay? The £2.50 per session will really eat into his savings.'

Okay, we've pretty much got all the readers on-side now, angry at the skinflint, evil, oppressive council, right? Great. So we can pretty much assume that they're too upset to parse out the actual details buried in the remainder of the article.

But a more careful reading of the situation reveals it's not quite what the reporter wants you to think: Mr. Taylor isn't a volunteer. He's a participant in the adult daycare program, which until now has been provided free of charge by the local government. As part of the program, Mr. Taylor helps out in the council cafeteria — as a form of occupational therapy — not as an unpaid volunteer.

The new fee being introduced will probably be a tiny percentage of the cost of running the program (remember, up until now it's been free). This is what the outraged parent has to say about the change:

Mrs Taylor said: 'I save the Government a lot of money keeping him with me and I would not have it any other way.

'I am an honest person and the underhanded way we have been treated sickens me.

'Those at the council should hang their heads in shame.'

Did you catch that little slight-of-tongue there? She "save[s] the government a lot of money" by keeping her own son at home. Breathtaking illustration of the culture of entitlement: her son isn't really her responsibility . . . he's the government's responsibility . . . and she's being public-spirited by looking after him (except when he's in the almost free government-run adult daycare program).