Express & Star

We're not out of the woods yet

Listening to the Prime Minister and his Chancellor whenever they speak at the moment, one would get the impression that Britain is a country where the good times are finally beginning to roll.

Published

We certainly deserve it. Four years of austerity have been thoroughly unpleasant and painful as families have cut back.

Often, people think of the economy as a cycle of boom and bust.

That can give the impression that we are all either reaping the rewards or we are all going down with the ship.

The reality is very different, as the pages of the Express & Star reveal today.

There are some enormously positive signs.

A new casino in an area of Wolverhampton that was left blighted by the failed dream of a shopping centre will create 133 jobs.

There are more on the way at the new multi-million pound Sainsbury's being built in the city, after more than a decade of legal wrangling was finally brought to an end.

Planning permission has been given for Debenhams to build a department store in the Mander Centre, bringing another 120 jobs in a few years time.

There are 800 new jobs on the way to Cannock from a new outlet village.

So on balance, this good news should more than offset the sadness of Walsall's saddlemaker Jabez Cliff going into administration.

It would, if we all thought like the Whitehall bureaucrats and the politicians who see jobs as numbers and statistics rather than the means by which families make ends meet.

Hundreds of jobs on their way a few months or years down the line will do nothing to console the 26 people being made redundant.

The only good news there is that rival Ideal Saddle and Walsall Riding Saddles will take on the Jabez Cliff premises and transfer 60 workers there.

It could be argued that this, at least, shows that there is still a market for the product and that the economy overall is good enough for there to be no vacuum left.

Then there are the 2,600 management jobs being lost at Morrisons. This is a supermarket that has failed to move with the times, only catching on to the home delivery trend at the start of this year.

The planned cuts in neighbourhood wardens, coupled with senior council officers in Wolverhampton forfeiting their annual pay increases, show there are still hard times ahead.

For all the speeches, statements and promises of politicians, we are all of us at the mercy of market forces.

Irreplaceable Paxman will be missed

There is no-one quite like Jeremy Paxman.

In an age of spin doctors, off the record briefings and leaks, his style of interviewing is compelling viewing.

Rude and aggressive he may very well be, opinionated and arrogant he most certainly is, but he reminds us of one vital thing.

Despite what the political elite may think, the power is ours.

It has always been ours.

And when they want to fob their voters off with pre-scripted sound bites, rehearsed with the spin doctors and then shoe-horned in to the interview in place of a genuine answer, Paxman always persisted.

Other interviewers might want to ensure they've asked all their questions.

Paxman would keep on until he was either satisfied with the response or had exposed his subject as the craven or callow individual they really are.

The highly paid advisers and hangers on who pull the strings of our political leaders were never able to intervene when Paxman got going.

His style would not work anywhere else. Only because of the high profile and exposure that the state broadcaster affords could his producers persuade his victims in to the studio for a mauling.

But whether they want to answer the question or not, Paxman has left them in no doubt:

They work for you.

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