If they had asked me what the unemployment figure was, I would have said ‘less than a million’. So how did it get to be 1.79 million with the addition of 164000 this month? Is that what has somehow become acceptable?
Clergy at least have a reasonable prospect of continuing to be employed .. Yes I know we technically aren’t employees … Yes I know we only work Sundays etc., etc. But I suspect that the fragile financial structures of the church are going to come under considerable pressure. Pensions for a start.
Thank goodness for Blue Peter and a bit of escapism.
Harry – your Irish background will of course remember the identical saga with Goodyear at Craigavon.
When living in Cupar many, many years ago, I fell victim to the American cut-back in investment in Glenrothes, and to us unemployment was 100%….and it was ghastly. From being an important part in a large company, I was suddenly unwanted, un-needed…a no-one. However we got through it within about three months, but I would not want to go through that again.
I think the Thatcherite revolution changed the shape of the class structure of society – from being a pyramid, with the mass of people at the bottom, it became diamond shaped with those in the middle being the biggest single group – and changed work patterns, the huge industrial workplaces disappearing. When unemployment rose in a context where the bulk of people lived at a level similar to that of those being made redundant, there would have been wider unease, or when one of the big workplaces closed it would have made national news. Now, in a world where we are nearly all middle class, and where heavy industry has all but disappeared, the world seems able to change without the changes appearing on our radar.