The Government's gamble with our economic prospects is failing. Last week they had to admit that the economy has gone into reverse.
More people are on the dole than since 1994 and more than one million young people are unemployed. Seven people are chasing every job in Gateshead. Around 2,500 jobs will be lost in the region's construction industry this year.
It always seems to be someone else's fault. Ministers have heaped blame on the snow, the Royal Wedding and now the Eurozone. Next they'll be saying the dog ate their homework.
Their excuses won't wash. The deficit had to be reduced but this government has gone too far and too fast. It hasn't revived enterprise but strangled it.
It would be funny if it weren't so serious. The efforts to reduce borrowing have increased it. The Government is having to borrow an astonishing extra amount of £158 billion this year alone to finance failure and a bigger dole bill. They are not cutting the deficit but adding to it. Growth won't come until people can get back into jobs.
There are alternatives. A temporary cut in VAT, for instance, would boost high street sales and give an average £450 boost for a couple with children.
Tax breaks for small firms hiring extra workers and a levy on bankers' bonuses would fund 100,000 jobs for young people.
The need for ministers to change course grows ever more urgent.
It is in this unhappy context that the activities of some crooks hurt many people very badly. There's been an epidemic of metal theft and sadly the North East has been blighted particularly badly.
Easy money has been made stealing metal but it's causing great disruption to rail services and electricity supplies and cost to its victims. Thieves stealing cable from an electricity substation in Gateshead caused tens of thousands of pounds of damage to household electrics because of a power surge.
Some courts only look narrowly at the value of the metal stolen. We should also tackle the cost of reinstating the often technically expensive job of what that scrap metal was doing before it was stolen and the cost to the wider economy.
I've been backing tough action to undermine this dangerous market. But the pressing issue is for the government to change its overall direction and fast.
They know in their hearts that it is not working but their complacency is staggering.
Newcastle Chronicle and Journal
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