A Positive, Serious Contribution Deserves a Serious Answer

No my ears were not deceiving me. That is what Alex Salmond replied to Tavish Scott's question regarding colleges admission (or not) findings and youth unemployment in Scotland.

Basically Tavish pointed out that 85% of colleges in Scotland have had to turn away applicants this year, many for the first time ever with some having seen a 800% increase in applications. In West Lothian the number of applicants has increased by 41% over last year, Oatridge college who have never had to turn away applications before saw a 74% increase in applications and turned away 300. These findings came from a Liberal Democrat survey of the the 43 colleges in Scotland looking at the numbers of applicants each has had to turn away over the last 3 years, the first of its kind to be published. On top of this the number of our young people claiming Job Seekers allowance over the past year has risen by 35%.

Jeremy Purvis the Finance Spokesperson has said about the findings in the report:

"Too many young people have been hit twice. They can’t get a job and now they can’t get a college place. What government can do is give them the opportunity to gain the skills and experiences that will help them get the most from economic recovery when it comes. Scotland as a whole will benefit from having more people ready and active for the workplace."

An increase in college places and training opportunities is one of the issues that the Lib Dems have been applying pressure on the SNP Government to provide for to help in this recession.

Alex Salmond's response to the actual question "Will the First Minister agree that action taken by his Government in this Budget must increase college places across Scotland?" is encouraging as is his acknowledgement that a recession inevitably increases the demand on college places.

Jeff has already pointed out that he thinks the answer "dropping the jousting" he gave Iain Gray and Annabel Goldie is a "clear signal that the budget would reflect Tavish's concerns" I would tend to agree, it seems that lessons have been learnt over the last 12 months on both sides.

Tonight Matthew I'm Gonna Be....

....David Kerr candidate for Glgasow North East, John Mason MP for Glasgow East and Stewart Hosie SNP Tresury Spokesman.

Yeah, Tam Smith SNP PPC for Linlithgow and Falkirk East is back at his Rory Bremner act, this time taking on all three without crediting any.

Today he is saying:

"Scotland's banking workers deserves more than a direct line to the breadline. These reforms must not jeapordise jobs in this industry. [Kerr see here]

"As an SNP MP for this area, jobs in Linlithgow & East Falkirk, and in the city of Edinburgh [said about Glasgow North East here*], which have a direct impact on this consitueency[sic], will be my top priority and I will speak up strongly and loudly against any threat to them.

"Since Tuesday's announcement voters on the doorsteps in Bo'ness, where I am campaigning on behalf of Ann Ritchie in the local by-election have been telling me that frontline workers should not pay the price for the problems their bosses caused.

"It is clear the best way to secure a strong future for jobs in West Lothian and Falkirk district in financial services is to send an SNP MP to Westminster to speak up for this constituency and to speak up for our jobs.

"The UK Government is the main owner of these banks and any sell off that puts this constituency's jobs or Scotland's economy at risk is unacceptable." [Compare those two paragraphs with John Mason's words here]

Tam Smith continued [apparently]:

"We must have competition in our banking sector but the potential loss of local branches and uncertainty of ordinary workers in financial services is worrying for many. [Make that Mason]

Retail workers in our banks are already facing up to job losses. A vote for the SNP will tell the UK Government that West Lothian and Falkirk District's workers will not pay for Labour's broken economy." [Make that Hosie]

Let me make it perfectly clear, many people who live in Linlithgow and East Falkirk are affected by banking jobs. Some of those that get on and off the bus with me in Edinburgh Park work in some of the banking offices situated there. Lloyds have been instructed to off load Intelligence Finance which could affect the jobs of 300 people employed at Kirkton Campus in Livingston. The 3,700 frontline bank jobs that are being cut by RBS to take 14% off their staff wage bill will undoubtedly affect others.

However, the SNP had at the initial outbreak of the banking crisis pledged money from a fictious Scottish Bank in some future independent Scotland to deal with this situation. The amount they offered was £50m which now seems small fry compared to what was needed. All the while Vince Cable had been warning that the futures of our banks was not sustainable from years before, though like John the Baptist he was ignored and his pleas almost thrown out into the wilderness.

Sadly we have got to a stage where the overstretched banks may need to offload staff to survive and protect the jobs of the majority. Other industries have also gone through that sort of situation over recent months. Not all have had the benefit of a Government injection of money to see them through so the job losses have happened earlier. Rather that merely speaking 'up strongly and loudly against any threat' of job losses, Linlithgow and Falkirk East needs an MP that will look to the future, getting those who have already faced or will face the inevitable into a job. It means encouraging jobs to come to the region, using the skills that our people have got, and a lot of recent redundancies in the area have been in skilled positions.

According to the West Lothian Courier West Lothian and Falkirk are currently ranked equal 10 out of all the Local Authorities in Scotland when it comes to unemployment. At 4.4% it is 0.4% higher than the Scottish average and 0.2% higher than the UK average. There has currently been a slip to 900 vacancies listed at local job centres, but there are 4,651 people claiming Job Seekers Allowance, that is 5 people for every job that is going.

We need to hear of real action to real jobs into the area. We need to utilise the workforce's that have been or are about to lose jobs from some of the firms locally that have been laying them of. People with IT, production and financial skills are here in our area desperate to get back into work. We need to seek out those green shoots when they do appear and persuade companies as they recover that investment here gives them a skilled and dedicated workforce. Skills in some of the sectors that have been hit are transferable to other sectors, there is more to a financial job that just what it says on the time managers, IT workers, accountants, data analysts etc are also amongst those that will be losing their works. But all will have transferable skills.

So rather than a short-sighted narrow view of Smith-Hosie-Mason-Kerr we need to get others to think outside the box, see what is available, see what they can offer. Just like many of us who graduated in the early 90s had to do we had to be imaginative it what we did next, throwing off our narrow pre-conceived ideas of where we were heading.

*Sadly again on the De Havilland subscription site, but check out the key phrases on google.

Osbourne Dipping Toe in Unemployment Ocean

David Cameron has said that with 2.5 million people unemployed in this country that we are facing a "jobs crisis". So what is the big scheme to deal with this?

Well George Osbourne has announced a plan to cut the employers National Insurance contributions for the first 10 employees of a start up company. The net effect? Well even Osbourne says this will only create 60,000 new jobs in the first period of a Conservative government.

So the net effect that this plan is going to have on 2,500,000 unemployed is reduce it to 2,440,000. Wow! That looks impressive. How many jobs without such a tax break will be lost in the same period? Even in good years 60,000 jobs are lost through natural evolution of businesses, in good years these tend to be picked up elsewhere.

David Cameron said yesterday:

"This is such an important week for us. This time we have a real chance of making a difference … Sixty million hopes resting on our shoulders. We must not let Britain down.

"Let this be the week we talk to the country about our plans, our vision."

Well so far in the job market 0.01% of that sixty million have had their hopes realised. We await with baited breathe the next big small idea.

Of course it is not the first tinkering the Tories have announced regarding National Insurance at the weekend they announced the rich people's top up scheme to ensure free medical care.

Politicians Letting Down West Lothian Workers

The CEO of West Lothian Chamber of Commerce has slated local and national politicians in light of the recent announcement that Bausch & Lomb's plant shutting down in Livingston. He said:

"It is disappointing that during recent years Alistair Darling, Iain Gray, Jim Devine, Margaret Hodge and Michael Connarty all had opportunities to influence changes that might have helped businesses like Bausch & Lomb to stay in West Lothian.

"The consequence of their inaction is that Ireland is now perceived internationally as a more attractive business location."

He is furious that the politicians haven't done enough to protect the regions eligibility under the Regional Selective Assistance programme (RSA). The area had maintained RSA status until last year, i.e. just before the world was thrown into recession, when European officals decided to reduce the number of Scottish areas eligible. Firms in such areas can claim up to 35% grants towards investment. It should be noted that Bausch & Lomb's other European plant in Waterford does now benefit from RSA status that the Livingston plant no longer does. Chamber President Duncan M Walker said:

"The factory is closing not because they're failing to produce innovative products, it's because the location in Ireland has RSA – Bausch & Lomb can get more activity while reducing costs. If we'd had more support from the people David McDougall mentioned, we might have retained the status which would mean Bausch & Lomb might have stayed."

Five years ago the company had won the Scottish Engineering Award for its work with "world-class technologies". As company Chairman Gerald M Ostrov said the closure was "by no means a reflection on our employees' professionalism, dedication, or efforts", but rather a purely financial decision.

Is it possible that Westminster and Holyrood could have done more to help maintain these highly trained, technical and skill jobs stay in the region? The writing was already on the wall even when the RSA was in place with firms like Motorola and NEC and others that formed the once renowned Silicon Glen pulling out to focus on other production plants. The area had been suffering even before the latest economic difficulties. The various industrial campuses around Livingston could become somewhat more of a ghost town if companies cannot be persuaded to stay in the area.

No Longer Through the Looking Lens

Five hundred jobs are set to be lost by the closure of the Bausch & Lomb contact lens plant closes in Livingston. The phased closure of the factory over next year and into 2011 comes from strategic decision to focus production in just two of its three plants globally.

The two other sites are the company's base in Rochester in up state New York and Waterford in Ireland which hosts the companies research facility. This is the same number of jobs that Diageo is planning to axe in Kilmarnock, and the same fate that affect the Motorola, NEC and other production plants locally. The reason. The net effect of previous closures in that the once proud Silicon Glen is suffering its highest unemployment in a decade and 500 more people will slowly over time be added to that number.

Gerald Ostrov, chairman and chief executive officer of Bausch & Lomb said it was "not a reflection of how our people in Livingston have performed, their professionalism, or their dedication". However, the lose of another major employer from the West Lothian area is another body blow to people in the area.

The Unemployed and Those that Cannot Claim

I was reading today that the unemployment level has rising, to well, the number it was at the last time I was unemployed, in early 1996. But the following graph shows another untold story.

As you can see the gap between unemployment claimants and the level of unemployed has actually grown, largely since 1997 when Labour came to power. Now there are all sorts of people missing in that gap, some are those that do not and will not seek work, but another group is often overlooked.

I've had a lot of correspondence recently with a few local residents whose style of work is not the traditional work for a firm, but contracting. Fine you may say contractors are able to earn big bucks good luck to them. This is true when the times are good, but when there is a recession on there are less people looking to employ specialists like them, especially at the rates that they need for their short term expertise. Don't forget these people often have families that need to be feed, housed and clothed too.

The problem is that often those contracts take them overseas, where they don't pay National Insurance. Or they set up one man companies and the companies get paid instead of them directly but of course they have access to the company finances. Also this is the group least likely to sign on between jobs as they have normally expected another one to some along. As some have recently told me they have tried to hold off as long as possibly without claiming benefit to bide them over, but now they may find out that they do not have enough National Insurance contributions to gain benefit under the new system. There is a definite gap in our benefits system which if Gordon Brown had truly have eliminated 'boom and bust' would not now be an issue. But as he failed it is a growing one.

Ironically those who in the good times try not to be a burden to the Government are a part of that gap. I'm sure there are others but it is frightening just what a gap has opened up in the 12 years of Labour's means testing between those who are claimants and those who are unemployed. This remember is the Government who claim they are fighting poverty yet the above chart makes you wonder just what holes various people have fallen through and just how they may actually be being counted in the figures given out by whatever department minister is spewing them forth.

UPDATE: As Andrew Reeves kindly reminded me, unlike that last time when I was claiming Job Seekers Allowance for 9 months after 6 months as an unemployed person you can no longer claim even income support. Considering I was out of work for 9 months when the job market was picking up, heavens knows what state some people are in with jobs being harder and harder to find.

No Tory Helping Hand to Nats

The SNP may well have thought the hand of friendship was going to be offered to them, especially in light of the favourable agreement that the Ulster Conservatives and Unionists seem to have struck for Northern Ireland. However, George Osbourne has spelled out to Alex Salmond and John Swinney that they will have to make efficiency savings even when a Tory government is elected. Osbourne said on yesterday's BBC Politics Show:

"Gordon Brown has left the UK in a complete mess and some of the burden of restraint has to be borne by Scotland as a whole."

adding:

"There needs to be restraint. Britain, Scotland needs to live within its means, the party's over."

So the SNP should stop their whinging as it will appear to fall on deaf ears from both the Labour and Tory camps and get on with doing things, and doing them more efficiently. Osbourne has also echoed the call of Tavish Scott the Lib Dem leader to get over the idea of independence just now and focus on the economy saying, "the SNP's obsession with independence needs to be put on one side while we all deal with Gordon Brown's recession".



Seeing as how interdependent all the global economies are right now on each other this is not the time to go messing with the status quo. Throwing in further uncertainty to the mix at the moment will only have one effect, that would an accelerated negative effect on the Scottish economy. Alex Salmond is obsessing about the rather precise number of 8,664 jobs (heaven knows how he came up with that detailed a number) rather than looking at the bigger picture. It is a time for macroeconomics not microeconomics. Especially at Government level who should get too bogged down in that sort of minutiae in the first place.

First the Apology Then the Fallout

Earlier today Sir Tom McKillop, former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland was amongst those apologising to the Treasury Select Committee at Westminster. This afternoon news came from Alan Dickinson, chief executive of RBS UK that the company plans to shed 2,300 jobs. He said:

"We recognise that any news of this nature is unwelcome at any time. It is essential, however, that we consistently review our business to ensure that we are able to operate as efficiently as possible, especially in the current economic circumstances.

"We will be consulting with our recognised trade union, Unite, and our employees throughout. We fully agree with Unite that we must keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum and we will."

I trust that as a result of this review the bonuses that they are giving out. Of the £20bn that the Government has used to bail out the back £1bn is earmarked to pay RBS employees bonuses. How much of this could be used to retain some of those 2,300 employees is a question that should be being asked by the Prime Minister as well as asking for those bonuses back.

Earlier today fellow Lib Dem blogger Charlotte Gore, who I normally consider far more economically liberal than me, claimed the Government should lay off the banks and their bonuses. There is one difference now to in the past when Charlotte worked from them. In the case of RBS the Government owns 68% of the bank and has every right to see that investment spent wisely. Why should the banks be a special case when other employees across the country are facing the possibility of a freeze on pay, not even getting their salary reviewed or may have to make further savings as their employers are feeling the pinch. If the market doesn't allow for it surely bonuses shouldn't be being paid?

When I was a Civil Servant my bonus was performance related and not a foregone conclusion, if I added value to the branch that I worked in I would be rewarded if I didn't then I wouldn't. This was a salary increase bonus not a one off payment. This year being in the public sector in an industry that is directly affected by the well being of other firms I wait with baited breathe. So maybe the banks should look at rewarding performance, but also be prudent about doing so, especially when many of their own customers are uncertain about their own financial futures.

Eat Start the Economy

Raymond Blanc may only shut down the restaurant of one couple who dream of running one every week on his TV show The Restaurant. But away from the world of reality TV the reality is looking far more harsh. Restaurants are going to be facing their toughest year since 1990 according to a recent survey. With the credit crunch taking a grip eating out is hitting high on people's list of economising.

The end result of course will be that our catering industry is looking likely to follow the retail trade in restaurants no longer being able to keep up with the lose of trade. Considering that retail companies have been going into administration or worse even during the run up to Christmas we can see what can happen. When you look at the names from the High Street from Woolies to Wedgewood you can also see that there may not be any guarantee for either end of the market it merely may come down to the overheads and whether these are met or not.

The sector is now tightening its belt and jobs and eateries across Scotland are starting to disappear and are expected to carry on doing so throughout the year. Maybe Gordon and Alistair should give us all vouchers to eat out at restaurants to give our restaurant owners an economic stimulus on the boil.

Some of the factors that are adding to the misery in Scotland are:

A need to thin out of the overly congested industry especially in Edinburgh.

An exodus of foreign chefs especially as salaries drop in comparison to the Euro wages offered elsewhere.

The reverse that good from Europe will be forcing prices up beyond which the price elasticity of the consumer can stomach.

Two thirds of people already stating they will be dinning out less this year.

Also post Hogmanay a growing number of restaurants are closing for an extended holiday in January and those staying open are not replacing staff lost through attrition.

Let's Pull Together Pulled Apart by Mulligan

Whilst the news of latest company in what was once known as "Silicon Glen" to relocate 140 jobs from its Linlithgow base is sad news the motion lodged by Mary Mulligan MSP about Sun Microsystems reeks of partisan politics.

"Parliament notes with deep concern the decision of Sun Microsystems to relocate around 140 jobs from its base in Linlithgow to Oregon in the United States of America; notes that one of the company’s executive vice presidents is Crawford Beveridge, a prominent SNP donor and member of the Council of Economic Advisers; understands that the Council of Economic Advisers exists to bring jobs and
economic growth to Scotland, not take them away, and believes that this is both extremely embarrassing for Alex Salmond MSP and extremely worrying for families
across Linlithgow and West Lothian going into the New Year facing redundancy. "

Only 45 of the 101 words in this motion relate to the situation the remainder are an outright attack on the SNP and there is no constructive action recommendation in what could be done. Basically it is shameful.

You wonder if she has deliberately worded her motion thus so that SNP list MSP and Linlithgow resident Fiona Hyslop cannot possibly lend her support to her motion? If so is this so that she can launch an attack that the local SNP have not supported her over a major employer in the area?

Sadly when Labour in Westminster are telling the other parties of the need to pull together to get through the credit crunch my Labour constituency representative at Holyrood is doing just the reverse. It is two facedness of Labour to call for unity in these hard times in one place yet for such a partisan attack when jobs are at stake in their individual patch.

I also find it quite bizarre that the Prime Minister and Chancellor love to point out that there is a global recession hitting us, that all that is going on is outwith thier remit. However, when parochialism is an effective tool one of their party's local representatives hides behind it being a UK, or in this case Scottish problem, even if the company is a global company with corporate headquarters outside these fair isles of ours.

Hat tip to West World

Update: Interestingly the Edinburgh Evening News has followed up on this story a bit since both me and West World blogged about it. It would appear that Mr Beveridge was a part time director with the company and as Sun Microsystems' spokeswoman has confirmed:

"Crawford Beveridge works part-time with Sun. The decision to close
Linlithgow was a manufacturing decision and Crawford was not involved in that
process.

"Had his participation been required, given his ongoing work with the
Scottish Government – in particular, the Council of Economic Advisers – he
would, of course, have had to remove himself from the decision making process
given the conflict of interest."

So heaven knows even more now just what Mary was seeking to achieve with this rant. Although she must now be wiping the egg from her face.

Jim Murphy Wants Sackings and to Decrease Unemployment

Scottish Secretary didn't have that good a night on question time last night. Whilst he attacked monetary stimuli as not saving people's jobs he failed to take any blame for the the banking sector failings despite Labour, and more crucially Gordon Brown being heavily involved in that line since 2007. Then to cap it all he want 4 more people to lose their jobs speaking on the John Sergeant scenario he said "I think we need to get rid of the judges rather than John". I mean there's off message then going off you own message.

But how long are Labour going to continue to blame the USA for everything regarding this latest situation. We had a chancellor, now Prime Minister, Telling us that the days of boom of bust were over. Fact is there was no buffer being built up in the good times in case any issue came up to alleviate the economy should bust be on the horizon.

Even Jim Murphy admitted last night that certain economies were in better shape that the UK is at present to face this crisis, but seemed adamant to not take any responsibility despite 11 years of Labour for this situation. However, his foreign policy experience may well rank with that of Sarah Palin as he also listed China, who currently are the world's lender of first resort, as being in financial crisis.

Maybe Labour, and indeed the whole banking sector, could learn a little from Sir Ian McKillop chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland. At least he has put his hand up and made his apology for his share of the difficulties.