MP Jobs Are Safe, But Not Those of a Million Public Sector Workers
By Mercia — Economists predict that up to 50,000 civil service and local authority jobs will go this year following the announcement that the coalition government intends making over £6 billion of spending cuts.
The really bad news is that these losses represent only the tip of a huge public sector unemployment iceberg which is bound to impact the private sector.Experts predict that this year's job losses will comprise fewer than 10 percent of all public sector jobs expected to go over the next few years as the Government struggles with unprecedented levels of sovereign debt.
When Britain went into recession in the early 1990s, the national deficit was "a mere" £50 billion — even so, this cost an estimated 600,000 public sector jobs.
With the deficit conservatively estimated to be in excess of £150 billion, it will be surprising if total public sector job losses do not exceed one million between now and 2013.
This means worse services as nurses, midwives, teachers, fire fighters etc., are made redundant or their contracts not renewed.
Interestingly, with civil unrest expected to increase, commentators predict that the police service will be ring-fenced from cuts in strength.
With unemployment inevitably expected to sharply rise as a consequence of Government austerity measures, many wonder what effect public sector job losses on such a scale will have on other sectors of the economy — retailing and leisure for instance?
As an indication of the degree of Government concern it has been revealed that some 16,000 temporary staff taken on by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), specifically to handle additional administrative burdens arising out of the recession, will now not have their contracts extended.
In addition, it has been stated that the Communities and Local Government Department is to lose over 10 percent of its budget in order to achieve some £2 billion in "savings."
Much of these "savings" are in turn being spent to support the ever growing costs of job seekers' allowance and other unemployment related benefits.
The Government also intents to achieve £100 million in savings by placing IT contracts overseas, in countries such as India, where wage levels are a fraction of those here in Britain.
Bizarrely, it is also claimed that the Government intends achieving some £30 million in savings through discontinuing their £1,000 per head subsidy to employers to take on new staff.
Yet, despite the size of these proposed cuts, it is evident that they pale into insignificance compared to this country's ever-increasing (real) level sovereign debt.
This is akin to using a bucket of water to fight a blazing fire which engulfs an office block.
The elephant in the room is taxation. It is clear that with growing unemployment and a government adopting half measures in reining in public expenditure, an increased national tax burden will fall upon the declining number of people actually in employment.
Meanwhile, despite the obvious seriousness of the present economic situation, there are no plans for Westminster MPs to forgo pay and benefit increases — far less to take a reduction
