January 16, 2009
Employment issues
Story link: Employment issues
Some very important issues have been raised here. The government has pumped huge amounts of tax payers funds into the banks, which havn’t been passing on much of the savings that they have been receiving from the latest interest rate cuts.
The slowdown in the economy is increasing unemployment at a rapid rate, and if we are not careful, we are going to have a huge percentage of the UK population unemployed.
It’s hardly a surprise if the glory days of Gordon Brown’s political resurrection are drawing to a close. The halo of global salvation was never going to last for long. As the full impact of the economic calamity unleashed by the credit crisis hits shops, offices and factories, a daily haemorrhage of jobs, bankruptcies, repossessions and short-time working are inevitably taking their toll. If, after £500bn has been pumped into the financial system, banks have been nationalised and interest rates cut to their lowest level for 300 years, one in 10 of the workforce is still forecast to be on the dole by the end of next year, then it should only be expected that the government’s crisis honeymoon is coming to an end.
More worrying are the growing signs of government drift and lost momentum just at the point when the roll call of redundancies and closures demands more determined and radical action. None of the piecemeal announcements and initiatives since the start of the year – from Brown’s jobs summit to the employers’ subsidy for long-term unemployed and yesterday’s £10bn loan guarantee scheme for small and medium-sized businesses – begins to match the scale of the crisis or the needs of those engulfed in a deepening recession.