The Week In View

The Chancellor has rewritten Kipling's famous poem "If". As unemployment soars to 4 million, it would now read "If you can keep your job when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you / You are the Chancellor, my son."

The unions yesterday called for the Chancellor to step down over his ineptitude concerning unemployment .

There were 139 localised flood warnings still in place yesterday as Britain lay sodden under heavy rains. More wet weather is expected. Residents in Grimethorpe cheered as a hostel for asylum seekers was washed away by the floods.

There was shock news for Grimethorpe yesterday as Grimethorpe Grommetts, the town's main employer, announced that there was an "imminent and very real" risk of closure. Alastair McPherson, Deputy Head of Grommett Control Production, said in a letter to the Company Board "I realise that in the current climate, I must consider resignation. Needless to say, I regard this as an absolutely devastating development after a lifetime dedicated to this company at a responsible level and just when I was considering further investing in the house which I bought through the company some years ago. I need hardly point out to my colleagues by way of aside that the triple filtration plant on my second swimming pool is now an entirely untenable proposition".

The CBI yesterday added their voice to cries for the Chancellor's resignation over his "dreadful" record on unemployment .

The Grimethorpe Grommets factory closed yesterday with the loss of 400 jobs.

The Queen's Head public house is seeing a record drop in takings. Former workers from Grimethorpe's are deserting The Queen's Head in droves, because they can no longer afford to drink there. This "knock-on" effect on other businesses demonstrates all too graphically the economic costs of unemployment.

It was reported yesterday that prescriptions of Prozac and other anti-depressants have reached their highest levels ever. Said our Virtual Economics Advisor, Andy Beharrell, "former workers at Grimethorpe's are suffering from record levels of stress and depression. These problems are well known to be amongst the many costs of unemployment". Our reported interviewed a former worked at Grimethorpe's, Sid Noakes, who had become so depressed that he attempted suicide. Said Sid, "Ee I don't know what came over me. I'm so bloody fed up with unemployment that I took out a bottle of barbiturates last night and I'm lucky to be here this morning. I puts it all down to stress due to t' factory closing. I've been 30 yrs in that plant, what am I going to do now? I'd only got 5 years to go to retuirement and now I get nothing."

The Queen's Head public house closed yesterday for the last time. Sid Clithero, 29, regular of the Queen's Head, said "Now they've laid me off at Grommets this place will suffer to start with. Me and a lot of the lads come here 3 or 4 times a week. Some of us spend as much here as we do on our mortgages. So Tony (the landlord) better be on the lookout for another job himself." This "knock-on" effect on other businesses demonstrates all too graphically the economic costs of unemployment, said our virtual economics advisor, Andy Beharrell.

As Grimethorpe loses its traditional skilled industries, we ask whether the wave of new call centres and other low-skilled jobs replacing them is really such a good thing. On the one hand, yes, it does replace life on the dole. But as former machine operator Masie Summers at Grimethorpes told our correspondent "I lost my job over a year ago, and now it's Christmas again, I really feel it. I used to have a good job at Grommetts, operatiung the machines and they'd give you you training in all their new stuff, so I felt I was learning something. All I've had this last year has has been three lousy nights a week with that rip-off call centre in Blackton, and they're thinking of upping and moving to India where they can get us girls even cheaper. I wish you worked for the telly; this should be on telly, and I've always wanted my chance.