Andrew Ellson (Extracted from "Earnings muted as unemployment jumps", The Times, 14 December

"National Statistics reported that annual pay growth in the three months to October fell to 3.6 per cent from 4.1 per cent the previous quarter. Meanwhile total unemployment rose by 72,000 to 1.49 million with the number claiming jobseekers allowance increasing by 10,500 to 902,000 last month."

[Ed: The UK's true unemployment figure should also include about 0.5 million young people (males mainly) who are on various so-called job training schemes or are unrecorded, and at least 1.5 million employable older people who have persuaded their doctor that they are disabled. The unemployment rate in the UK is probably about 10-12%, the same as in France or Germany. Deficits in all developed countries are rising. There is now less social mobility in the UK than for 50 years past because the meritocracy is now being sustained mainly by those from fee-paying schools -- in the media, sciences, politics and business -- leaving a widening gap in earnings behind them. There's nothing in the traditional political canon -- left or right -- that has an answer to increasing automation on the one hand and increasing government bureaucracy on the other in all developed countries. We are entering not just an economic recession but an altogether new painful era which might take a century or more before there's anything approaching an equilibrium.]