Back to work

March 22nd, 2010

There can be no greater measure of a government’s performance than the length of the dole queue.

If there are people willing to work but can’t get a job then they can legitimately asks questions of the country’s leaders.

And those questions are most certainly being asked of the Scottish Government in Edinburgh after the revelation that unemployment rose by 16,000 over the past three months, two thirds of the UK total.

Perhaps it is not surprising that unemployment is currently high given the unprecedented global recession we are living through.

But these latest figures come against a backdrop of falling employment across the UK, which suggests something is going badly wrong north of the border.

The cancellation of the rail links in Glasgow and Edinburgh, the slump in construction projects, the lack of teaching and nursing jobs and the housing cuts have all been suggested as contributory factors.

Of course, we know that government intervention can work, such as the bank bail outs which saved 700 jobs at the RBS mortgage centre here in Greenock.

And the news this week that nearly 20,000 young people have secured modern apprenticeships has justified the decision to hold out for this during last year’s budget negotiations.

The unemployment figures should be a concern to us all – we need no reminder of the damage long term unemployment, particularly among young people, can have on the fabric of our community.

Drugs, poor health and poverty are the legacy of the Thatcher years when our communities were abandoned to their fate.

These figures should be a wake-up call to the Scottish Government in Edinburgh to put aside point scoring, work across the parties and parliaments and help people back into jobs.

That’s the least those people facing the dole deserve.