Now everybody in financial circles and in the media is talking about a looming "triple-dip recession". Last Friday, the latest economic data showed that the British economy shrank by 0.3% in the last 3 months of 2012. And if any shrinkage occurs in the next 3 months then it will be officially the third recession since 2008.
Never mind that for the whole year, growth was "flat"... and that even the Olympic Games yielded under 1% "growth" (0.9%) during June-August. Yet any worker could have told all of these pundits that the economy is in a slump, a permanent dip - and not just for the past 3 months. This crisis has been going on for decades, and it was merely aggravated (albeit rather seriously!) by the 2008 banking meltdown...
Shrinkage over the last 3 months however, is not what Cameron, Osborne or any of the ConDem government ministers predicted. Osborne's budget anticipated that by the final quarter of 2012, the economy would have grown by 3%!
So now even the conservative IMF is suggesting politely, as it always does, that Osborne should slow down with his austerity measures - although so far, this strutting wimp has said he won't hear of it!
The jobs' death toll
How exactly Osborne's budgetary growth wishes could or would have come true in the first place, is another story. After all, manufacturing - where real values are produced - has been shrinking by 2.5% across the whole year, construction falling by 9.3% and services only up thanks to the "Games", by 1.2%!
Jobs, which keep the money going round, have been disappearing, day on day, week on week.
Working backwards - the latest announcement was a total of 1,300 job cuts at Lloyds Banking Group - which, if we are not mistaken, is "government"-controlled? Another 5,000 job cuts at Lloyds are apparently pencilled in for later in 2013! So 6,300 jobs going, agreed by Cameron?
Then on the 23rd, too, the short-haul airline Flybe announced 300 job cuts.
On the 22nd, Rolls Royce announced 400 job cuts, to be made mainly at the Coventry Ansty site - and most probably linked to the defence budget cuts, which were confirmed the same day, and included 5,300 troops...
Just the week before, Honda in Swindon said it was going to cut 800 permanent full-time jobs on top of the 325 temps it had already axed.
Then what about the ongoing closures in the NHS, whereby every week up to 100 jobs disappear?
And this is all on top of the (at least) 20,000 retail jobs which must be added to the jobs death toll - those resulting from the latest in a long string of high street bankruptcies: HMV, Jessops, Comet, and Blockbusters.
"Job-rich"? that's rich!
It is really ironical that in the middle of all of this destruction of livelihoods, the Office of National Statistics should have published its latest figures for employment and unemployment (for September-November 2012), which showed "growth" in jobs (!) and which the Employment Minister immediately boasted about, speaking of "record employment" levels being maintained by the ConDem government!
The bosses mouthpieces, the Financial Times and Economist have taken all these obviously out-of-kilter statistics at face value and are asking how it can be, when there is economic shrinkage, that employment grows to record levels? They have coined a phrase, in fact - they call it a "job-rich" recession!
Job-rich? Where are the jobs they are talking about? The above list of disappearing jobs is just the tip of the iceberg. And whatever new jobs may have been created, they are just casual, low-paid, non-jobs often for just a few hours!
Never mind. Us workers know better. And what is more, the common experience of attacks on our livelihoods - wages and jobs - which are right across the board, in every possible sector - is something which can bring together the diverse ranks of the working class. And then we can prepare to fight together. That is something we need to aim for. No section, however small should be left to act on its own. We are all in the same working class boat. But it will only stop sinking if we decide to use all of our many arms to row it.