Did you ever know that you're my hero?

I wouldn't even attempt to top the excellent job Justin McKeating just did of demolishing Nick Clegg's "Alarm Clock Heroes" PR offensive, but there are a few bits of Clegg's rancid sound bite that I'd like to take a belated swing at with my own wrecking ball.

As a media-savvy Public Relations Professional, Clegg must have heard of the high-profile Help for Heroes charity, set up to provide help and support for wounded members of the armed services. I think we can all see what he just did. Yes, he really did hijack the language of good causes, selflessness, sacrifice and undoubtedly genuine suffering for his political advertisement, using emotional trigger words to make media consumers think about his brand in a positive way.

I'm not going to argue that his PR offensive is ... well ... offensive. I'm not one of those people who 'define themselves by their offendedness' as Salman Rushdie would say. I'll content myself with saying that it's a cynical piece of manipulation from a mollycoddled rich kid who's completely out of touch with the lives of the people he's taking about.

First point - the Help for Heroes website clearly states that the organisation is 'strictly non political and non critical; we simply want to help.' Nick Clegg thinks it's clever to borrow their language to flatter, manipulate and polish up his political brand. He's presumably also pleased with the way he's managed to spitefully deploy the language of war to subtly imply that those who've lost their jobs are shirkers and hand them a metaphorical white feather. I'm not 'offended' by that. I just think he's being a complete git.

Second point - neither Clegg or Cameron have ever been woken by an alarm clock before dawn on a cold, wet winter morning to drag themselves unwillingly to a hard, boring, unfulfilling or badly-paid job, because it's their only alternative to being poor and workless, perhaps their only alternative to being homeless or seeing their family fall apart. They've certainly never woken up to that early morning alarm clock knowing they haven't even got that, that they're jobless and being dragged out of bed to compete in an interview for a boring, badly-paid job in a job market where employers can take their pick of over-qualified people with flawless employment records.

Nope, they went direct from being coached in expensive private schools to university, to jobs in PR which, although essentially useless, were prestigious and well-paid and, thence, into politics, reaping the rewards of the choices, opportunities and contacts open to people from an extremely privileged background. They might, rightly, claim that their present jobs are difficult and and involve getting up early in the morning, but they are in the extremely lucky position of having chosen exactly what they wanted to do with their lives, being more than adequately rewarded for doing it and never having to worry about paying the bills.

I respect people who get up first thing in the morning to go to an oversubscribed interview for a crap job, empty the bins or work in some godawful call centre for peanuts and no job satisfaction, just to feed their family and keep a roof over their head. It's just that Clegg's supremely unqualified to talk on their behalf. I'm not 'offended' by Clegg talking as if he was one of us. I just think he's being a complete git (note to Cameron; no we still aren't 'all in this together' - not even close).

Finally, talking about people who get out of bed to go to work as if they were maimed soldiers is a bit rubbish, isn't it? In a time of under-employment, I wouldn't want to make light of the years of low-level misery represented by people grinding away in hard, unfulfilling jobs, just to make ends meet. Even so, being woken up by the alarm clock and thinking 'oh hell, I've got to drag myself in to work' isn't really quite the same thing as having your legs blown off by a roadside bomb, is it? But, for the sake of argument, let me take you by the hand and together we'll visit Nick's wonderful world of elastic words, where the two things are somehow equivalent.

We've got a government that has deliberately chosen to go for fast deficit reduction, by way of massive cuts in jobs and public services, rather than balancing deficit reduction with the need to keep people in jobs, so that they've got up to date skills, are paying their taxes and can afford to spend money keeping the providers of goods and services in business. If we were to think of the working people of Britain as soldiers, fighting for their country, then who would be the ones blowing their livelihoods out from under them, leaving them in shock and fighting for survival? Seeing Nick Clegg pledging support for our "Alarm Clock Heroes" is as weird as seeing a Taliban bomber rattling a tin for Help for Heroes. When you think about it, Clegg's comparison is utterly bizarre, but I choose not to be 'offended' by it. I just think he's being a complete git.

Looking on the bright side, for paid journalists (or unpaid bloggers like me) who are occasionally inspired to write angry pieces about shamelessness, foolishness and deceit in politics, Nick Clegg is practically a one-man job creation programme. Thank God for Nick, the wind beneath our wings.