Green, shoots and leaves

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

And so on. What Thomas Stearnes Eliot didn’t tell us about the human condition in his magisterial, funereal The Wasteland is virtually not worth knowing.

However brilliant Eliot was (and, believe me, he was) even he lacked the power of premonition. Even though he was writing on the eve of the most poignant reminder of the evil that men do, WW1, he couldn’t have envisaged the destruction of the financial world that gripped the earth in the 1930s. He was, of course, long gone by the time Lehman went to the wall last September.

But he’s worth recalling, particularly as talk of green shoots and economic recovery are currently widespread.

It less than three months since remarks of economic positivity from Baroness Vadera were greeted with utter derision. How much has changed since January? The CPI has continued, inexorably, down towards zero. People are losing more jobs everyday. There are even signs that some markets are over the hump. But green shoots? Talk of these is wildly premature.

The three UK recessions since 1970 have lasted an average of 2 years. Given that this one only really started in the summer last year, there is still – there has to be – more bloodletting for the economy.

Eliot’s use of enjambment at in the opening lines of his masterpiece is no coincidence. Dislocating the clausal break from the line break endows the first four lines a kind of self-consuming quality, as if each line is trying to get going before the last has had time to settle. This could not be more apt at a period wherein many analysts, bankers and politicians are running towards recovery before they can walk.

The kids aren’t alright

In the summer of 1978, a group of young Conservatives from Hendon answered an emergency call to meet near the Welsh Harp reservoir in North London. Although 100 were invited, less than 20 turned up, but they still contributed to arguably the most famous political campaign of all time, Saatchi & Saatchi’s Labour Isn’t Working.

It seems appropriate, even 30 years on, that the Tories used the young to act as an icon for Britain’s unemployed. There are now almost 2 million people out of work, one third of which are aged between 16 and 24.

The total rate of unemployment is set to hit 10 per cent by 2010. This could mean that by the start of next year, over one million young people will be without jobs. No shortage of extras for Saatchi then.

No one is safe

You’d be forgiven for being thoroughly sick of dire economic news. If you’re a factory worker, you’ll soon be working a four or even three day week.

If you work in retail, there’s no guaranteeing the future of your company, no matter how large or seemingly iconic it may be. And we all feel concerned for you if you work in the financial services sector.

Almost all private sector jobs are going to be reviewed in the next 18 months as companies, faced with plummeting turnovers, seek to drastically cut costs and remain economically viable. But jobs in the public sector have always been viewed with a certain amount of dewy-eyed dependability.

Councils are primarily centrally funded and topped up through precept (council) taxes. They are not required to make a profit, indeed, several have been running at a loss for many years. The news this week  that local authorities plan to cut almost 7000 jobs in the coming months is therefore cause for serious concern. It will cause many civil servants to shudder.

With fewer people in work, more people on benefits and the public spending less on the high street, coupled with the now universally derided VAT cut will lead to a sharp fall in government revenue generated by income tax. This drop trickles through to county and borough councils, leaving them with challenging funding cuts.

Although councils are above the free-market motivations of quick profits and big risk-taking, their funds are not. They need to keep their money somewhere before it’s spent on relaying the B316 for the third time in a year. Many lost a lot of money in the Icelandic banking collapse.

It seems unthinkable, but it’s inevitable: less income tax = less funding, less funding = layoffs. It doesn’t matter what the sector, nothing matches up to the latest hopeful phrase “recession proof”.

Perhaps the treasury will decide they can no longer afford to keep Gordon Brown.