Half a million public sector jobs to go.

Perhaps it was done accidentally on purpose or perhaps he is an idiot but Danny Alexander allowed two pages of tomorrow's spending review to be photographed as he left the Treasury building today. This is reported in the Guardian

From what can be read the coalition expects 490,000 public sector jobs to be lost by 2014-15 as a direct result of its spending cuts, Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, has

The document also proposes that public sector employers should try to strike deals to cut hours to reduce the level of redundancies.

The forecast is based on the estimate of the Office of Budget Responsibility, the new independent body set up by the coalition to publish independent forecasts on jobs, growth and borrowing.

It also says "Government will do everything they can to mitigate the impact of redundancies." This will be done by creating conditions for private sector growth, encouraging pay restraint and reduced hours and supporting employees facing redundancy so they can find work in the private sector.

The government hopes that the private sector will keep its promise to take up the slack in the labour market caused by the large shedding of public sector jobs.


HOPES that the private sector will take up the slack? What about the hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs that will also go as a consequence of these cutbacks? These cuts seriously risk throwing the UK into a double dip recession – Look at what’s happening in Ireland

These cuts have as much, if not more, to do with ideology rather than the deficit. I have just three days to go before I part company with the Civil Service. I know that this is a big risk and sooner or later I will have to find a new job in what is (to say the least) and depressed job market. But I don’t envy my colleagues who are facing three years looking over their shoulders to see if they are the next for the chop.

We will know the outcome of the Spending Review in all its horrors tomorrow.