Corus

By Adrian Pearson on Feb 20, 10 03:09 PM

Imagine if Lord Mandelson's latest plan was to offer banks battered by the global economy an apprenticeship scheme.
Say he's called all the banks lent billions of pounds and asked for it back, and removed all guarantees propping up bank lending.
Instead, he's found a few million pounds for trainee schemes.

Obviously, there's a punch line to come here.

Because Mandy has done nothing of the sort, the Government would never stop helping banks.

But for the people of Teesside, who are today seeing a proud history come to an end, Mandelson could only offer apprenticeships and not the bank-level support thousands of workers are crying out for.

There will be many on Teesside wondering why he bothered to make the visit to Redcar in the first place if all he can offer is a bit of money for training schemes.
Life-long Labour voters should be wondering why their party, the party of the working man, is ignoring their pleas and spending so much on London's financial sector.

When Teesside was given its news Gordon Brown was diverting attention with a wave of green energy jobs in Tyneside. In between the two many at a business conference in Durham where asking, as I was, why we were not supporting steel production on the day Clipper talked about the thousands of tonnes of the stuff they'll be sending down the Tyne.

Has the cabinet visit actually made Labour look worse in Middlesbrough and Redcar? I know some are asking why ministers come all this way just to offer little real hope.

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1 Comments

THE GHOST OF ENGLAND PAST said:

I Was in Germany last week, and I heard a bunch of workers Having a laugh and joke
when I asked what was so funny,they replied
Little Englander your government are.
We are thinking of taking England without
firing a shot this time.We Germany and our French allies are taking your country piece by piece. And you can't stop us. We insist you learn German My friend.

February 22, 2010 5:23 PM

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