The Green Party has solved youth unemployment. Not with wages that match inflation or actual career pathways—with a two-year gig that sounds like it was generated by an algorithm trained on LinkedIn posts from 2019.
Co-deputy leader Mothin Ali unveiled the scheme at conference, diagnosing young people as ‘bored, desperate and lost’ before prescribing them jobs so niche they may not technically exist yet. The Party wants to employ under-24s in roles that seem designed to test whether reality has finally snapped entirely.
We’re talking positions like ‘biodiversity audit assistant’, ‘community composting liaison’, and—this is real—‘professional plant waterer’. Not gardener. Not horticulturist. Plant waterer. A role so specific that the job description probably reads: ‘You will water plants. This is your entire career for two years.’
Would a two-year contract at minimum wage actually address systemic youth joblessness? No. But it would make phenomenal television. Imagine the audition process: sweaty eighteen-year-olds nervously explaining their passion for checking soil moisture while producers film their desperation in 4K. The finale could be a watering-can relay race.
The Greens aren’t wrong that young people are struggling. They’re just solving it the way a startup solves everything: by rebranding suffering as opportunity and calling it innovation. At least they didn’t use the word ‘disruptive’.