Knocked for six
"Extraordinary times require extraordinary actions" said the Prime Minister on Monday. Two days later the people of Maesteg find out to their cost what he means.
The late shift at Budelpack COSi - or Revlon as many in the town still call it - walked into work today to find the cosmetics factory had gone into administration. The Dutch owners had already been laying off workers and talking about "restructuring the business" after what sounds like a dramatic drop in sales. The spa and well-being cosmetics for Clinique and Body Shop were coming off the Maesteg production line. We just weren't feeling flush enough to buy them.
Now there are four hundred jobs on the line in a town that's home to some twenty thousand people. It's no wonder one of the workers says the news has knocked them for six.
Last Autumn must have seemed less extraordinary but no less bleak for some of the same workers who lost their jobs when the car parts factory next door shut its doors. A few found work at Budelpack. Others got jobs at Bosch in Llantrisant. That makes redundancy twice in just over a year a real danger for them - not extraordinary, just reality.
And then came the news late afternoon that up to another two hundred jobs could go in Llantrisant at the Serious Food Company. They make juices, smoothies and soups - a company spotted by the Welsh Assembly Government and put on their KB4B client list. KB4B? Knowledge Bank for Business, a Government initiative and "a top ten manifesto commitment of the Welsh Assembly Government, [is] designed to provide coherent and tailored support to companies with high growth potential".
That was 2005. In 2008 there's no talk of growth potential, only of working with Budelpack and Serious Food to "mobilise all available support for their continued operations."
The Labour AM and MP representing Maesteg will be hoping that Gordon Brown's "extraordinary actions" - the promise to raise taxes on the better off, the attempts to put money in the pockets of the less well off, for now, the gamble of borrowing billions to pump into public spending and avert catastrophe - will convince the people they represent to stick with Labour; that the "do nothing" taunts at the Tories will be heard - and believed.
Or they might simply decide in the ordinary homes, shops and pubs of Maesteg that it was Gordon Brown and Labour who got them here.
I'm Betsan Powys, BBC Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~21~RS~)
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I heard more than a whisper weeks ago that the Serious Food Company was being beaten by a rival rather than the economic downturn.
It was the smoothies according to Keith, too many different smooth combinations for too few smooth customers at too high a price.
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Every day you log on to the BBC news website there's a new story of jobs being lost. I think there's a definite and grwoing feeling that Wales benefited least and will now suffer most.
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Ah, but never fear, Bethan Jenkins is bang on the button, and on top of the case..
http://www.bethanjenkinsblog.org.uk/labour-ams-whipped-in-to-place
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/south-wales-news/neath/2008/11/27/volunteers-plant-bulbs-in-caewern-91466-22336170/
Great to see the Welsh Assembly getting to grips with the economic turmoil so speedily..
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I think it's quite clear what side of the fence you're on here, Betsan.
Still, such a shame when hard-working people who actually have proper jobs have to bear the the brunt of a global economic downturn, isn't it?
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#3 lBG wrote:
"Ah, but never fear, Bethan Jenkins is bang on the button.."
Just wondering if lBG has a subconscious admiration for Ms Jenkins. She certainly gets under his skin.
I don't want to get sidetracked, so back on topic.
I was talking to the proprietor of a local cafe yesterday about the economic crisis. An elderly gentleman of Italian descent, he said VAT would mean a 2p in the pound reduction on his menu prices. Not much of an accounting problem, but the cost of supplies for his business have risen to such an extent in recent months, that he really can't afford to pass on the reduction, as he would have to increase his prices otherwise.
It seems that Brown and Darling are so out of touch with reality that they think the measures taken will really stimulate the economy. They are in cloud cuckoo land. Even on Darling's over-optimistic growth figures (according to independent authorities) its going to take until 2015 to balance the books. That is, we are all going to have to pay through the nose for many years for another Labour government's mismanagement of the economy. We can say this of Labour: "You did something - you wasted 20 billion of our money!"
Ah, but the British state gives us in Wales another choice. We can vote for the 'do-nothing' smooth-talking Eton educated Dave, who, if elected, will appoint Hague and Redwood clones to veto the Assembly's weak legislative applications. In any case fiscal and monetary matters are not devolved and we will be totally at the mercy of a Tory party solely concerned with preserving the wealth of the City and the south of England where it has its real electoral base. Pity help us.
Cameron's election just might push the Scots into voting for independence. That might revive a flagging PC, which is afraid to face the unpalatable fact - Labour IS going to renege on its All Wales commitment to support a 'Yes' vote in the referendum. The actual wording commits them to supporting a 'successful outcome'. For Labour MPs, Brown and the Cabinet, that means a 'No' vote.
Plaid is on the horns of a dilemma. IWJ has taken them into a coalition, from which they will get precious little. The sooner they come to terms with that the better. At least, Bethan Jenkins is helping to lay bare for her party that they were conned into bed with Labour.
We need a party which will fight for Wales and its people when its clear that the unionists will do little or nothing for us in the recession which is beginning to bite hard.
So, Ieuan, where is Plaid Cymru going?
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"Just wondering if lBG has a subconscious admiration for Ms Jenkins. She certainly gets under his skin."
Hmmm... I think if we are talking about 'protesting too much' and 'subconscious admiration', that might be an accusation which would be slightly more uncomfortable for me if directed at my views about Kirsty Williams...
Yes, my initial impression of her as a harridan egomaniac totally obsessed with her vanity in a ruthlessly ambitious attempt to fast-track her career into the political stratosphere. And having a triumph of 'style over substance' and care for the welfare and well-being of others.. Well this view has, I'm sorry to have to admit, mellowed a smidgin...
She is certainly someone who has more real drive and intelligence in her little finger than Bethan Jenkins could muster up in her entire body politic. The question is 'what is under the bonnet' - if she were able to focus that driving ambition and target her energy to making things better for Wales, Kirsty Williams could be the one to 'nuke' Plaid out of the coalition.
I shall certainly be thinking twice about bad mouthing Kirsty in the future - after all she is clearly more intelligent and ambitious than Sarah Palin, and so she is clearly not someone to get on the wrong side of - or I might find a 'wolf-hunting' helicopter outside my house, trying to obtain my hide for her new funky fashion 'Bedd Gelert' trenchcoat, trimmed with Jenny Randerson's offcuts from her hairdresser...
In fact, if I were Nick Clegg, I would looking over my shoulder very frequently - 'Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear..'
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#6 lBG wrote:
"Kirsty Williams could be the one to 'nuke' Plaid out of the coalition."
Nuke? The LibDems couldn't light a sparkler.
As IWJ seems to be dozing. He hasn't woken up to the fact he's being taken for a ride. It would only take a little shove for him to fall out of the Labour double bed. I doubt he'd wake up, even then.
I hardly think the female harridan object of your apparent fantasies would hurriedly make the same error as MG, or IWJ, if she has the intelligence and ruthless political ambition you credit her with. No sane political party would touch Labour with a ten foot barge pole now, especially when we're about to be hit by an economic earthquake of Labour's making.
I, for one, am not interested in what Ms Williams 'has under her (LibDem) bonnet'. If she's into hunting, I doubt if she'd waste a cartridge on you, after all, isn't Beddgelert best remembered for a load of sentimental twaddle?
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"If she's into hunting, I doubt if she'd waste a cartridge on you, after all, isn't Beddgelert best remembered for a load of sentimental twaddle? "
How very dare you !?
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And there was me thinking the story of Llewellyn and his hound Gelert was about loyalty, the WAG certainly has forgotten the story, else the Knowledge Bank for Business might have had a deposit to assist loyal employees.
Fair-weather friends the WAG.
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Looks like the window of opportunity for AM Kirsty Williams may come sooner than we had thought possible...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/11/29/lib-dumb-liberal-democrat-leader-nick-clegg-slags-off-his-own-party-colleagues-on-packed-plane-115875-20934579/
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It is true about hard times; as talk about the Prime Minister and later revealed at Revelon plant in Wales....
*Dennis Junior*
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Correction:
The late shift at Budelpack COSi - or Revlon ....
sorry, for the mistakes....
Dennis Junior
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