In focus: The national wealth
David Cameron’s performance at this week’s Tory conference has been a strange one. On the one hand he’s been talking about the “bright future” the UK has. On the other, he’s been warning us that the cut coming in the Spending Review in a couple of weeks won’t be easy (really, Dave?).
Cameron seems to be putting a lot of emphasis on “wealth creators”. Those individuals who think of themselves as entrepreneurs and are primed to strike out on their own. Presumably, Cameron thinks these people will come from the ranks of the mass unemployed set to be created by the shrinkage of the public sector.
I think there’s a gaping hole in his theory, here. The private sector and the public sector, at a small business level, lean on each other a great deal. Start dismantling either of them through redundancy or abolition and you begin to have something that resembles a Tower of Babel.
This week Alliance Boots announced that it was cutting 750 jobs from its Beeston plan, thus weakening further the company’s ties to Nottingham. Now run out of an office in London since it went private in 2007, Boots has been steadily cutting jobs in Nottingham over the last decade and now employs an army of temporary workers.
Alex Gourlay, chief executive, says that the job cuts will make the company more efficient. Of that there can be no doubt. And many “wealth creators” have come out of the various Boots job cuts down the years. One only has to look to the packed BioCity to see that Boots has done its fair share of wealth creating down the years.
But not everyone is an entrepreneur. Some out there want the security of a monthly pay packet. They want to leave their jobs behind them when they go home on a Friday afternoon. This may not be the kind of thing Cameron wants to hear, but it’s the truth.
Ironically, Emda have come forward and said they’re going to help those made redundant by Boots when the job losses kick in next April.
Chief executive Jeff Moore was quoted in the local press this week as saying: "We are contacting Boots to see if they want us to do anything. We will respond as we have done previously to what we call 'economic shocks'."
The irony being, of course, is that no-one will be around for when Emda’s staff need help after they’re made redundant in 2012.
Nearly everyone agrees cuts have to be made, however, not all are agreed at the scale of them. Look out for the Power of Ten page in our November issue for some insight into how the business community in the Midlands thinks the government should go on its cutting spree.
But Cameron shouldn’t underestimate the morale-sapping atmosphere that pervades at the moment. Only the braves, most derring-do will set up their own business at the moment, I believe – it simply isn’t an option for the majority of the workforce facing redundancy, sadly.
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