REACTION to David Miliband’s hunt for work shows how hard it is to be an MP. He is to teach politics two hours a week, he is to be a non-executive director at Sunderland FC and he is pitching TV ideas to the BBC.

Mr Miliband was the stand-out candidate in the Labour leadership tussle.

He is charismatic, energetic and experienced. Yet he lost, partly because he was viewed as a policy wonk who’d never done a proper job.

By volunteering to teach politics in his former school in north London, he is going straight to the chalkface. The A-Level students will certainly benefit, and David Cameron will see the big society in action.

Part-time ambassadorial work at Sunderland will give Mr Miliband earthy experience. He will lend kudos to the club and help promote a headline regional organisation. Excellent.

But it is reported that he is to earn £50,000-a-year, which is where this begins to become difficult. Shouldn’t a high-profile MP be supporting all of the region’s businesses as part of his £65,738-a-year job as an MP, not just those which pay him?

It raises a difficult question for us, the electorate, too. Do we expect our MPs to be at work every hour? Or do we expect them to be human?

Whereas some people might do the garden or walk the dog in their spare time, who are we to stop Mr Miliband earning a few pennies in his?

Then, we learn Mr Miliband has been pitching to the BBC. So, a couple of hours teaching, a couple of days working and a couple of TV shows must start to eat in to the full-time work of a well-paid constituency MP.

It is a fine line. On the one hand, in his extra-Parliamentary work, Mr Miliband has much to offer; on the other hand, the public nowadays very quickly become wary of a politician who is seen as grasping and not pulling his weight. Too many jobs would do as much damage to Mr Miliband’s reputation as a few, carefully- chosen experiences would enhance it.