ON his Facebook page, Middlesbrough Mayor Andy Preston announced a recent visit he made to Middlesbrough job centre.

He even posted a video claiming staff there informed him companies are in hiring mode and that there have never seen so many vacancies.

Are they taking the mickey? Middlesbrough has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country for one simple reason – there aren’t any jobs!

If Mr Preston spoke to actual job seekers I am sure he would have received a much different response to the one in which staff simply cut-and-pasted a reply from the book of Tory (grim) fairy-tales.

The jobs-a-plenty battle cry is a myth – propaganda to hide the abject failings of a clueless government who seem to believe if someone works one hour a week the jobs market is buoyant.

We often notice the same job entries are repeated hundreds of times, like the worse case of indigestion.

Zero hours contracts are ripe, fake entries even riper. As for the remains, well they are either commission only or unwaged. Gig economy, more like fib economy.

Stephen Dixon, Redcar