UK Unemployment reaches 17 year high

Unfortunately now many new business will survive, so much red tape these days.

Mark has a point, red tape is a problem, but if inflation is outstripping wages rises, then demand is going to be a problem.

I know I'm a broken record, but petrol prices are a joke, a BP station near me has gone up 6.5p a litre in the space of 3 weeks.

I noticed it went up 1p this week, I know the price of oil has gone up, but when oil drops, the price at the pump normally takes longer to come down.

I'm climbing back onto my soapbox again ....

What we need is a national campaign sustained by government to find out HOW we can get back to decently paid full employment in a global economy. This is government's responsibility, not that of business, because it's business's role to grow profits, not well-paid jobs for everyone to do.

We've been losing well-paid jobs overseas for years and haven't found anything like enough replacements for them. Income levels for the middle-range and lower income ranges of society have been dropping consistently; that's damaging to social cohesion and makes the economy more fragile than it need be.

There've been umpteen twiddly little initiatives to even up access to the existing jobs "cake" but nothing's been done to grow the size of the cake. So far, politicians have carefully avoided the whole issue of jobs growth and I'm not expecting George to break with tradition on Wednesday.

What we need (and are unlikely to get) are professional marketeers to tell UK PLC what overseas markets want to buy from us at a good price and at high enough volumes to keep us all in work.