It’s still looking grim out there

With the ongoing scandal about MP’s expenses one might be forgiven for forgetting that the dishonesty of a few public servants is not the real issue. In that hackneyed but succinct summary by Bill Clinton: it’s the economy stupid. A short article in the Times today serves as a useful reminder: Shell to axe 10,000 jobs, Jessops - 50, HP - 850, Wolseley - 270. In some cases the numbers may seem small, but many small batches of redundancies adds up to a lot of people out of work. David Blanchflower, until recently a member of the Bank of England MPC estimates 100,000 over the next 12 months. I’d say that is a conservative estimate, but a sobering one nonetheless.