Keeping Calm and Carrying On

I haven't been posting lately as reiterations of previously expressed outrage would have been tedious to read and depressing to write. Government policies are still counterproductive, the coalition continues to dismantle public services, and the economic case for austerity continues to weaken. The Localism Bill is dragging itself through parliamentary processes, changed little by amendments. A storm of warning and protest about proposed NHS reforms from nearly every observer is largely being ignored by the PM. The only good news, that the Committee on Climate Change's carbon budget recommendation was accepted, shouldn't even be news. It only was because BIS and the Treasury were being reactionary about recommendations that should have been accepted as a matter of course. Moreover, the agreement to cut emissions by 50% will only be meaningful if actually achieved. That will require significant policy intervention, which is not yet forthcoming.

Rather than concentrate on national policy, I've been thinking about personal lessons from the past year.

Five ways to survive in a dying public sector organisation

1. Set aside a time (just after lunch on Friday is good) when everyone in the office can have a thorough bitch-in about the week's developments in government policy and their negative consequences. Sarcastically reading aloud recent CLG press releases will form part of this cathartic exercise. A current example: Pickles to cut red tape that stops the public from flying flags.
   
   (As an aside, I think it striking to compare the number of press releases from CLG about social care and flags. The former concerns the protection of abused children and vulnerable elderly people, arguably most critical task of local councils; the latter are pieces of fabric waving in the breeze. During April and May thus far, six seperate CLG press releases have been about flags. None have been about social care. See for yourself. What does this tell you about the department's priorities?)
   
   
2. Ensure that you have an exit strategy. Easy for me to say now, as I have a Masters place, but this is a huge source of anxiety for my colleagues. We now have less than five months left, and some are I think beginning to panic that come September they might be left adrift. Options being considered within the office, other than simply getting a similar job are: full-time study, setting up a as a self-employed consultant, charity work, and retraining as a teacher. However risky or speculative it might be, some plan for post-redundancy is essential, and ideally it should be something you feel good about. Rather than gloomily watching the organisation wither away around you, try and look on it as an opportunity for change and to move on with your career. Again, it's all very well for me to say that as I don't have kids or a mortgage. Still, the strange period of knowing your job will vanish is an ideal opportunity to consider what you need and want out of life in general, as well as your career.
   
   
3. Avoid regrets. There are a number of projects that I've put a great deal of time and effort into which will very likely be lost once my organisation has gone. I've had to make peace with this, in order to concentrate on the most important projects that really must continue elsewhere. These things need to be put in perspective. None of the reports that I've prepared or the emails I've sent will be of great interest to historians in a hundred years. They did what was needed at the time and provided me with useful experience, but if the paper copies are recycled and the word documents fossilise on a server somewhere, civilisation isn't going to fall. That does not mean that I wasted my time, just that the situation has changed. Regrets are a waste of energy that is better spent planning for the future.
   
   
4. Don't become isolated, either from your immediate colleagues or other organisations. Mutual support in my team is proving a really powerful thing. My colleagues and I are trying to support each other through hard times, and I consider that extremely important. As well as practical help (reading each other's CVs, sharing information about jobs, etc), we keep up with each other's progress, setbacks, and morale, wishing luck with interviews and providing tea for whoever is having a bad day. At times, three people in my team have all gone for the same job, but amazingly this hasn't caused distrust and excessive competitiveness. The atmosphere in the office is genuinely that of all being in this together. Moreover, the whole public sector is going through seismic changes, with redundancies at every organisation I work with. This certainly provides a heartfelt topic of conversation with any public servant I happen to meet.
   
   
5. Create some lunchtime escapism. Yes, it's all very depressing. The government is waging an ideological war on the public sector, there are far more people on the dole than there are job vacancies (the current ratio is five to one), and the future can seem bleak. It's important to avoid reading the news until it makes you cry with rage during your lunchbreak, and instead use the time for distraction. I tend to go for a walk, or read a bit of a book (novels and popular science, no current affairs or economics), or send a long email to a friend, or just talk to colleagues about something totally unrelated to work. Usually involving anecdotes about the wanton destructiveness of their children.

Even if you're not in the lovely situation of impending redundancy from the public sector, you will likely have some financial anxieties. Inflation is up to 4.5% and 42% of households expect to have less money to spend over the next year. You might notice some common themes in my pieces of advice to handle this: firstly, each would also reduce your carbon footprint, and secondly, each would be much easier to follow if you happen to be young, have no children, and live in an urban area. That would be my inherent bias as a twentisomething childless urban dweller, sorry.

Five ways to cope with the Age of Austerity

1. Get rid of your car, as they are a huge financial drag. Petrol prices are volatile and rising, road maintenance budgets are falling. Cycle or walk whenever possible, try not to rely on public transport. Bus and train fares are rising steeply whilst subsidies fall; frequency and reliability are thus deteriorating and will continue to. Given the quantity of sunk costs to car ownership; purchase, insurance, tax, maintenance; ditching the private vehicle rather than trying to use it less will make a much more significant saving. When bus, bike, train, or feet won't do, there are always taxis and car clubs. Moreover, the additional exercise will help with point two...
   
   
2. Stay as healthy as you can. Of course this is always a priority, but even more so when controversial and risky reforms to the NHS loom. During this kind of chaotic period of cuts and reorganisation, patient care is going to suffer, even with the best will in the world. This is not a good time to need a hospital or GP, at the very least you're likely to have to wait longer.
   
   
3. Shop around for food, buy only what you need, and don't waste it. Travelling on foot or by bike also helps with this, as you can't buy more than you can carry. Vegetarianism is cheaper than being a carnivore. Ready meals are an expensive source of calories. Special offers are only worth it if you would have bought the product anyway. Brands and special luxury ranges are generally a ripoff. It feels like I'm stating the massively obvious here, but these things add up and food is something that you can't buy second hand!
   
   
4. Think about your role in the Big Society. The government is radically changing the social contract and you must expect less from public services and more DIY. How would you cope if your local library, leisure centre, job centre, or Sure Start centre halved its opening times or closed altogether? Could you volunteer to help keep such a centre open? Which public services would you particularly notice reductions to? Which approach would make more sense if your preferred service is threatened: campaign against the cut, or volunteer to mitigate the effect? Do you know who your local councillor is, in case you need to put pressure on them?
   
   
5. Always look on the bright side of life. Happiness is threatened by redundancy and economic slump, but not precluded. Living within your means in the UK is likely to provide you with a good standard of living, even if your means are small. A little more frugality with regard to material goods wouldn't be a bad thing in the western world. There is great truth in the old saw that the best things in life are free. To wit, whenever I need cheering up, there are always pictures of baby animals.

More than five reasons why Cambridge is one of the best places to be in these harsh times

1. As it is 5 miles in diameter and flat, travel within Cambridge can effectively be cost-free. The vast majority of drivers expect and respect cyclists. Some roads do involve a measure of modal warfare, but there is usually an alternative and better route to be found. There are some glorious paths alongside the river Cam, as well as various quiet roads which form the cycling superhighways around the city.
   
   
2. Cambridge is highly aesthetically pleasing and has lots of green open spaces that it would be very difficult to start charging for access to. Admiring historic buildings and lazing on Parker's Piece will remain enjoyable, even if the parlous state of local government finances causes the latter to be mown less often.
   
   
3. Given the concentration of people in the city relative to the rest of the county, outlying villages will inevitably suffer the loss of libraries, leisure centres, and other services before the city itself, simply on the basis of usage. The student contingent (approximately 16,000 of the 130,000 total city population) help to keep the arts cinema and numerous lovely independent cafes viable.
   
   
4. Cambridge is a refuge for the left wing. There isn't a single Conservative on the City Council (whereas they run the County Council, a source of obvious political tension). Whereas the UK voted 68% No to AV, Cambridge voted 54% Yes. We also have a young and enthusiastic Lib Dem MP, Julian Huppert. Although I don't agree with everything he says and does, which is much more than anyone could expect from an MP anyway, he clearly has a lot of energy and interest in reflecting Cambridge's interests. I also admire his habit of communicating what he's doing and asking what he should be doing, for example canvassing twitter for questions he should ask in committees and parliament.
   
   
5. Although housing costs are painful and the rental market vicious, living costs in Cambridge are otherwise relatively low; I've already mentioned transport. There are lots of small independent food shops, which allow comparison shopping in a way that supermarkets simply do not. Obviously the city has supermarkets too, but if you hate them as much as I do you can avoid them. I find that fruit and veg are noticably cheaper from the local grocer than big box supermarkets. The charity shops are excellent for high quality second hand clothes and books.
   
   
6. It's a friendly, safe, pleasant environment that combines useful compactness and access to services with open space and a rural feel. My Suffolk-countyside dwelling family think it cosmopolitan, my London-dwelling friends consider me to be out in the sticks. Cambridge contains fields of cows and multiplex cinemas; truly the best of both worlds.

It has been almost exactly a year since the Coalition government came to power in a cloud of smug Eton bonhomie. I've survived the first year of austerity with my job intact, albeit doomed, and my home city relatively unscathed. This time next year, I expect to be an impoverished student and suspect that the cuts will feel a lot sharper. The important things are to keep calm, carry on, and take note of what may turn out to be a significant fact: since the student protests and March for the Alternative the government has completely lost the trust of the police.

Let It Grow, Let It Grow, Let It Grow

This week we learned that the UK economy shrank by 0.5% in the last quarter. George Osborne blamed the snow, conveniently forgetting that much of continental Europe experienced the same arctic conditions. Meanwhile Sir Richard Lambert, the outgoing head of the Confederation of British Industry, heavily criticised the government for having no economic growth strategy.

Sir Richard is right, when it comes to growth the government has some policy gimmicks but no actual strategy. Back in October last year a 'Local Growth' White Paper came out, awkwardly titled 'Realising Every Place's Potential'. Although the paper wanders erratically across planning, housing, sustainability, and region-bashing, the main message is summed up by this quote:

A further feature of earlier approaches was the belief that planning could both determine where growth should happen and stimulate that growth. This approach failed as it went against the grain of markets. Regional and other strategies stifled natural and healthy competition between places and inhibited growth as a consequence.

This makes it pretty evident that the new plan is to have no plan. The government doesn't think it needs a growth strategy. It considers the encouragement of economic growth not really any of its business; all it needs to do is destroy as much of the public sector as it can, and the economy will grow like Japanese knotweed. This is a very simplistic form of neoclassical economics, based on the lovely myth of perfect free markets. So as to ensure that the Department of Business Innovation and Skills doesn't look like a waste of space, though, a couple of policies have been announced.

Technology and Innovation centres are to be established, the first of which will allegedly open in less than two months. Next to nothing is known about what these are or what they'll do, other than the fact that they got £200 million funding in the Spending Review.

The other policy trotted out as supporting the economy is the Regional Growth Fund. This consists of £1.4 billion over 3 years, scraped together from various government departments (BIS, CLG, DEFRA, DfT, and the Treasury) for projects to 'rebalance' the economy away from the public sector. Regional Growth Fund is caught in something of a Catch-22. Public sector bodies categorically cannot apply for it. Private sector organisations can, but must ensure that they aren't breaking the rules on state aid, which try to prohibit the government from propping up certain companies at the expense of others. State aid rules are complex, hard to understand, and greatly restrict the monetary support that businesses can get. As you can imagine, this presents problems. Nonetheless, the first round of the fund (a maximum of £300 million) attracted nearly 450 bids totalling well over £2 billion.

£1.4 billion may sound like an awful lot of money, but it is trying to replace multifarious infrastructure and transport funds, on top of the £6 billion spent in the last few years alone by Regional Development Agencies. For all their faults, RDAs provided business support and economic strategy. They are being wound up at the moment and their functions centralised or simply stopped. They will not be replaced, unless you count the completely unfunded Local Enterprise Partnerships, which I am not inclined to.

How successful is the No Plan economic plan likely to be? To date the signs aren't encouraging. The government is ignoring the fact that the public sector used to spend a lot of money in the private sector. And the fact that the private sector relies on public services and infrastructure to operate. And the fact that business confidence is heavily linked to government policy. And the overall state of the world economy in relation to the UK. The economy is shrinking, and the cuts have barely started yet. VAT hadn't risen yet in the last quarter, either.

The UK is vulnerable to economic forces far beyond its control. Rises in petrol prices, which the press have been up in arms about recently. Rises in food prices, as we import so much of what we eat. Rises in cotton prices, as we import almost everything that we wear. Inflation is therefore rising whilst the economy contracts. Stagflation, as it is charmingly known, was a feature of the 1980s. Inflation now is nowhere near what it was then (4.8% compared to over 20%), but give it time. Peak Oil is on its way.

The government wants private sector growth, which would require internal demand and/or exports to pick up. Demand for products and services within the UK is unlikely to grow given high and rising unemployment, limited credit availability, and higher VAT. Faced with reduced government support for the young and elderly, people will tend to save more. The disaster that is housing policy will increase costs in that sector, too. House prices will continue to rise as new supply gets scarcer.

Demand for UK exports has grown as the value of the pound falls, but is limited by the economic troubles of our main export partners (the US, Ireland, and the rest of Europe). Moreover, our major exports are cars, weapons, and financial services. Car demand is influenced by the likelihood of unemployment and wider economic climate (alarming), credit availability (poor), and petrol costs (rising). Weapons demand is influenced by government defense spending (being cut). Financial services got us into this mess in the first place.

Despite all this negativity, I am aware that I live in one of the few places to be prospering economically. The high-tech cluster around Cambridge is one of the few bits of the UK to be a net contributor to the Treasury. But at the moment the government isn't interested in what's holding this area back; overloaded transport infrastructure, unaffordable housing, and loss of public sector co-ordination and expertise. These are market failures which cannot be fixed by the private sector.

The government has lost sight of the basic fact that you have to invest money to make more money. That's practically the only policy lever it has left, in any case. National interest rates have little influence on levels of inflation or the cost of new borrowing nowadays. Regulation and tax incentives for business aren't popular with our neoliberal coalition. Their No Plan is to spend less to make more, probably based on a hunch.

This is not to say that no economic growth equals economic doom, far from it. Growth is pointless unless it improves wellbeing, and in any event cannot carry on indefinitely. At the moment government policy seems to be shrinking the economy and reducing wellbeing, although as ever I console myself with the fact that greenhouse gas emissions fall during downturns. Ultimately the UK and the rest of the world will have to reshape our economies to operate within environmental limits. Perhaps a coalition-assisted double-dip recession might set the scene for a lower carbon, less oil-dependent economy? It's a long shot, but hope for a green revolution springs eternal. Even when government economic policy seems entirely misconceived.

Just Keep Moving

On Friday Iain Duncan Smith advised the unemployed to 'get on a bus' to find work. As well as being incredibly patronising, this talk of the 'flexible labour market' ignores both economic theory and observable reality.

For a start, there is no economic rule that there will ever be enough jobs for everyone. At the moment, jobseekers outnumber vacancies to an almost farcical degree in economically weaker areas of the country. In the area of Wales Iain was discussing in his speech, for instance, there are approximately nine unemployed people for every vacancy. Presumably Mr. Duncan Smith would suggest that all those unable to get a job either commute further or move out of Wales.

Helpfully, the government will be making both options much more expensive in coming months and years. The costs of road, rail and bus travel will all rise. Petrol prices are creeping up again, VAT hits 20% in January, and the fuel escalator kicks back in next year. Road pricing is back on the cards. Bus subsidies are being cut by 20%. Rail fares will rise by 3% plus the Retail Price Index (currently 4.6%) each of the next three years. In fact, it looks like the best option will indeed be to get on your bike, as Norman Tebbit so famously suggested. Unfortunately, cycling from Wales to London on a daily basis is scarcely practical.

Moving house to get a job, though, would be even harder. Housing benefit is being substantially cut, the affordable housing budget has been hung, drawn and quartered (post on this to follow), and those in social housing have a newly created massive disincentive to move. New social tenancies will be on a novel and deceptively named 'affordable rent' basis, constituting 80% of market rent. That might sound reasonable, but in London would result in rents tripling. In Cambridge, I gather social rent would double under the new terms. Existing tenancies will remain on the same terms as they were created. If moving house would inevitably result in a vast increase in your rent, it would take a very attractive job to get you packing.

As with all the policy currently being made, Iain Duncan Smith's approach is entirely predicated on reducing spending, in this case on welfare. The Department of Work and Pensions isn't trying to strengthen the economy, reduce regional inequality, tackle long-term unemployment, or improve business confidence. It is assumed that swiftly reducing the deficit will cause these things to magically occur all by themselves. A number of nobel prize winning economists are sceptical of this.

Crudely cutting benefits, especially housing benefit, isn't going to make the labour market more flexible or create jobs. Indeed, jobs will be rapidly lost as the cuts bite. Encouraging people to move, or indeed forcing them to, is useless when there aren't jobs available. In the UK, housing costs strongly correlate with job availability, as house building has failed to keep up with demand in successful areas. Cuts to housing benefit and the affordable housing budget will move the unemployed away from jobs. Further away than they can commute, even if travel costs weren't rising steeply.

There's another significant problem here, and it concerns the Big Society. If communities are to unite in order to provide their own public services, as the coalition expects, they will need to be stable and cohesive. Housing benefit cuts will force hundreds of thousands of people to move, causing huge social upheaval. What hope have unsettled and precarious communities of successfully running libraries, community centres, and schools?

High levels of spending on welfare are a symptom of a geographically unbalanced economy and hugely dysfunctional housing market. Coalition policy is ignoring these causes in favour of the idea that anyone without a job just isn't trying hard enough. Again, it's hard to reconcile this insistence on believing the worst of people with a sudden flowering of voluntary work and community enterprise. All I can conclude is the government doesn't understand that things are connected, things like jobs and housing and transport. I wouldn't have thought that was too complex an idea to grasp, but unfortunately the Diary of a Civil Servant confirms that it is.

I Used to Care But Now Things Have Changed

This post has a soundtrack from the wonderful Mr. Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed.

I've recently been giving some thought to how my views on cutting the budget deficit have changed over the past year.

In 2009 my bugbear was the Labour government's 'deficit-what-deficit?' policy. At the time, it seemed entirely irresponsible to ignore the budget cuts and tax rises that would clearly need to happen. Moreover, both opposition parties seemed to be colluding to cover this up. Prior to and during the election this year, none of the three parties put forward proposals for how exactly they would tackle the deficit. All of them said that it would be tackled, then waved away the details of how. The principle point of argument then turned out into when the deficit should be dealt with.

During this pre-election period, I was enthusiastically pro-cuts, as well as pro-restructuring taxation. During the time I've worked in the public sector, I've witnessed a lot of what felt like wasteful and pointless expenditure of time and resources. I found it deeply frustrating at times that public sector structures evolve so slowly, and are never quite suitable for the current challenge. So I thought that tackling the deficit could prove to be a great opportunity to restructure institutions in order to tackle climate change, inequality and social deprivation. To identify wasteful areas of spending and duplication, to reconnect public institutions with the public they serve, and to demonstrate that a low carbon future is actually cheaper than business as usual. What I hoped for was a long-term plan for reducing public spending whilst kick-starting a low carbon economy.

Naturally, many of the phrases I've used in the above paragraph were also featured in the manifestos of all three political parties. The coalition document probably included most of them too. But I've become a lot more cynical in the past few months, and the government's deficit reuction plans are not what I had in mind.

The most critical difference is that I thought the public sector should be restructured in a considered way, with a view to the long term. Specifically, with a view to 2050, when we will be emitting 80% less carbon dioxide. So says the Climate Change Act. In contrast, the coalition have made a point of doing everything very fast. They threw together an emergency budget, abolished all manner of institutions, and proposed almighty upheavals of every government department in their first month of government. In fact, they claimed proudly to be turning the entire concept of government upside down.

What has changed my view on cuts is that the public sector and population at large have been entirely absent from this decision making. I don't call a couple of websites inviting bright ideas sufficient consultation for turning government upside down. Indeed, even the usual impact assessments seem to have been skipped for many changes. Until October's spending review, it won't be clear exactly how much pain each agency, scheme, and fund will carry over the next few years. This uncertainty and feeling of utter helplessness results in a public sector full of very jumpy, disillusioned employees with a penchant for black humour.

I am no longer the enthusiast that I was because the suddenness and depth of the coalition's cuts scare me. I simply don't see how they can possibly help the economy to recover. The government's message seems to be that reducing the deficit, whatever the effect on the public sector, will miraculously fix the weak economy.

This ignores basic economic theory - government spending is part of GDP. Reduce spending and GDP falls. Cut jobs and unemployment rises. There is no automatic rebalancing whereby the private sector grows as the public sector shrinks; the two are interdependent. To illustrate, ministers often rail about the public sector wasting money on consultants. Well if that money wasn't wasted, those private sector consultants wouldn't have jobs. Wasteful it may be, but it's also a job subsidy. Likewise, infrastructure investment required private sector firms to actually build the bridges, roads, and railways, which they make a tidy profit on. Public sector support for education and research is absolutely vital to the private sector; if the UK doesn't offer the skills and innovation companies need, they will go elsewhere.

Reducing the size of the public sector will therefore reduce the size of the private sector, at least initially. A significant, possibly record-breaking, rise in unemployment next year looks inevitable. There's nothing like high unemployment to knock confidence amongst banks (mortgage arrears!), retailers (saving not spending!), and markets (recession!). Rising unemployment also has huge social impacts, reduces tax revenues, and, without significant intervention, perpetuates itself to the next generation.

In 2009 I thought that sensible cuts could bring about economic recovery, and feared that the government would just ignore the deficit and lumber on regardless. In 2010, I no longer have to worry about the deficit being ignored, quite the opposite. Perhaps this is a case of be careful what you wish for? The problem is that the cuts we're getting look like they will damage both the economy and our ability to tackle climate change and social problems.

Ironically, over the past year not that much has changed in relation to my job. In 2009 I didn't think that it would last beyond 2011. Now I'm nearly certain that it won't. Which brings me neatly to an elegantly written new blog that I found through Society Guardian, documenting how it feels to be a redundant public servant. The author writes from a much more level-headed perspective than me, as befits someone with 20 years in the public sector to my 4. I recommend that you take a look.

Up in Flames

The phrase 'bonfire of the quangos' has had a lot of airing from all political parties in decades past. It seems to be the done thing with a new administration, to condemn all the previous government's quangos and then set up a new quango to investigate the fact that there are too many quangos.

All this proves is that if you read the word quango enough times it loses any meaning it may once have had. It is supposed to stand for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation, but is generally used to label any public sector body that isn't a government department, a local council or a hospital. For variety, you can also try a qualgo, or quasi-autonomous local governmental organisation. I might have made that one up, though.

To date, the coalition government have set up the Office for Budget Responsibility, falling into the trap of setting up a new organisation in order to get rid of other ones. This is precisely how quangos proliferate so - ministers say they want to do something, and in order for the new thing to be announced with a fanfare, it must have a new organisation attached. Or an old one which has been renamed and restructured. I've heard this process called re-disorganisation, unsurprisingly.

At the present moment, though, cutting is the order of the day, and public sector organisations are dropping almost daily. I have naturally been taking a particular interest in those with offices in Cambridge.

Today's victim was the Government Office of the East of England, as eight regional government offices were abolished. The London one remains, incidentally, as CLG's accusations of inefficiency, ineffectivity, and unpopularity do not apply there, I can only assume. The Government Office of the East of England (GO-East) employs quite a few people in Cambridge. As does the East of England Regional Development Agency, which has two offices round here and has also been abolished.

In the case of both these organisations, it is not that their functions and thus their jobs are being moved or reorganised. The government has taken the view that their functions are just not needed, and their jobs likewise. Meanwhile, all local authorities are undertaking restructuring exercises; the current polite phrase for trying to shed people faster than natural wastage can achieve.

All this points to a rather worrying situation next year. Many highly-skilled, considerably experienced people will be searching for jobs, and I might well be among them. I've got a healthy CV, but that's not much help if I'm competing with 500 other candidates. Public sector job opportunities simply won't exist, so the private and third sectors will be inundated. On the one hand, I agree that some layers of bureaucracy were in need of slimming back. Moreover, the expertise being lost from the public sector could envigorate and influence the private and voluntary sectors. One the other hand, increased unemployment is inevitable. Where are we going to work?

There is an understandably high level of anxiety amongst local government employees at the moment. Everyone knows someone, who knows someone, who is seconded to someone who works in a government department and tells tales of policy mayhem. Nobody is certain that their job will exist next year, or whether their workload will be made irrelevant by tomorrow's policy announcement. Everyone wonders whether the Big Society means getting fired and then doing the same job as an unpaid volunteer. Confusion about localism abounds.

The fact is, most public sector workers don't really want to work in the private sector. Personally, I just don't care about profit. I want to be paid enough to live on, which I am. The prospect of a bonus won't make me work harder; an interesting new project will. I am motivated by a desire to try and understand how the world works and how to make it a better place. Even if I never make more than the most infinitesimal progress with either, at least it will have been worth getting up in the morning.

That makes me sound naïve and idealistic, but I'm not without pragmatism. I'd take an unsatisfactory job in order to pay the rent; I've been a cleaner before, that definitely lacked intellectual stimulation. Thinking about job opportunities over the next few years, I can imagine a couple...

Big Society Enforcement Officer. Being anti-social is no longer to be allowed; you are part of the Big Society, whether you like it or not. This might not be a paid job, but you'd probably get a uniform and a taser.

Local Opinion Assessor. True localism means understanding what local people think about everything, all the time. Someone needs to measure that opinion, using whatever means necessary.

More seriously, some occupations are needed even if the entire fabric of civilisation collapses. Plumbers, takeaways, bike repairs, doctors, and second hand shops perhaps. Cambridgeshire's high-tech cluster is doing very nicely despite the downturn, which is encouraging. And despite our moribund history in the sector, hopefully the UK can manage a few more jobs in renewable energy and other cleantech.

However it seems that the days of the quangocrat are numbered.