Afternoon:
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CHRISTMAS is over, and with it the hopes of many of London's small retailers that the season might save them. Staffing experts warn that employers who held off from cutting job before the turn of the year will soon have to wield the axe. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that most people will enter the New Year expecting a long rather than a short recession. And it is that expectation that will frame the politics of the year to come. According to the FT/Harris poll out today, fewer than one in five people agree with Chancellor Alistair Darling's prediction that the recession will end before next December.
At the weekend Shadow Chancellor George Osborne stepped up his response to Labour accusations of a "do nothing" approach, by promising to try to reverse the Treasury's planned increase in national insurance payments from 2011. Though funding of the move was unspecified, the promise puts the spotlight on "taxes on jobs" at a time when redundancy fears are moving to centre stage.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development expects 600,000 jobs to go in the coming year, taking unemployment to a peak of 3 million in 2010. More than a quarter of those employees who expect to keep their jobs expect no pay rise. The British Chambers of Commerce wants to postpone the planned rise in the minimum wage, and while no one wishes to see the low-paid lose out, minimum wage earners may well accept a pay freeze rather than see their jobs vanish. Voters' fears about unemployment will take levels of anxiety and distrust of politicians to a new pitch. Repeating past mantras - for example that the recapitalisation of the banks will fix the credit crunch - will not work in that environment. Both major parties must show they can respond to New Year conditions which will see many of the forecast job cuts and bankruptcies become a reality.
Bridging the gap
PLANS for a new crossing from Greenwich to Silverton, at the Royal Docks, have the full backing of Mayor Boris Johnson. It would pass beneath the Millennium Dome over to Silverton, at right angles to the Blackwall Tunnel, where there would be a toll plaza. There is no doubt that a new eastern crossing is necessary but the scheme has its critics. Labour members of the London Assembly feel it would be better positioned, as originally planned, from Thamesmead to Beckton in the Thames Gateway area. That proposal had secured £350 million in funding, £90 million short of the total.
Labour members argue that it could be years before planning permission and fresh Public Finance Initiative funding will be available for the Silverton bridge. Moreover, millions already spent on the Gateway bridge proposals would be lost. The Mayor says he has assurances in principle that the £350 million funding would be available for the new proposal.
He will have to make a coherent public case for his plan. Certainly the Thames Gateway bridge proposals raised objections from environmentalists in terms of its potential impact on wildlife, as well as the extra traffic it would generate in Bexley.
Mr Johnson is suggesting that funding would be more readily available for a Greenwich crossing than one further east, which means it would be more financially viable. In terms of position, which is the crucial argument, a Silverton crossing would make sense, linking two busy areas north and south of the river. Wherever its position, a new eastern crossing will bring enormous development benefits to east London and is already badly needed.
And celebrating...
Harold Pinter, whose funeral takes place this week. The Nobel Prize-winning playwright and native East Ender helped define the English stage: adopting the cockney cadences of his childhood in his plays and making the Pinteresque pause into a national catchphrase. He will be missed but the plays - and their pauses - will live on.
