Please Sir ... More

State sector employment is a racket ratchet.

Public sector spending cuts could lead to an exodus of graduates from regions outside the Southeast, impeding economic recovery, according to the Work Foundation

Graduates in the North and Midlands are disproportionately employed in the public sector (we know why that is, Labour bumped up the numbers of state sector jobs there), so "spending cuts are likely to result in a ‘flight’ of university leavers away from these areas to places with stronger private sectors in the Southeast".

Well yes, it doesn't take a research assistant to tell us that. His report warns that patterns of improved graduate retention in cities and regions outside the Southeast "risk being reversed altogether". Well there's a risk that anything could happen. He chooses to highlight the alarmist case. He says:

High-skilled graduates are vital for urban innovation and growth. With the scrapping of schemes such as the Future Jobs Fund, the coalition must now focus on developing strategies aimed at integrating the highly skilled into local private sector jobs.

Not doing so risks exacerbating regional divides between successful cities and regions (mainly located in the Southeast) and those in the North and Midlands.

Hm, would this be the Future Jobs Fund which the coalition claims is very expensive? Why would a research assistant choose to highlight it, I wonder?

If a Labour government pumps up economies in its constituencies with unsustainable government debt, just how much more money are taxpayers required to throw at this imbalance?

If some cities are chronically unsuccessful, how much money should taxpayers in the successful areas have to continue to throw at them over the long term?