TWO MILLION......AND COUNTING

Today it was confirmed that 225,000 redundancies have been announced in the last three months. Upwards to two million out of work - the highest figure since 1995.
Signs we are heading back to the 1980's are there on every High Street across the country . From Woolworths to upmarket reestaurants like Fishworks, the closure signs are going up.
In my next door village of Mytholmroyd, a swanky gastro-pub hailed as a sign of the
area's renaissance has just closed its doors amid rising debts and a shrinking clientele. And it's not just the north where things are looking grim.
Last week in Chiswick, a grateful restarateur about to close at 9pm welcomed a group of us as the only customrs he had had al night. People just don't have the dosh to eat out like they used to.
The thousands made redundant by Woolworths and Adams stores will now be looking for work. It's our job as a Labour Party to create the economic conditions we need to get people back to work. Otherwise we are going to see widespread distress of the kind not seen since the Thatcher years, when many of us supported the People's March For Jobs.
Let's start by properly nationalising the banks and holding them to account so the money we have bailed them out with can be ploughed back into the economy. It is time for Gordon Brown and Alisdair Darling to really bite the bullet and acknowledge that the days of prosperity, which Tony Blair aknowledged the other day were more down to "luck" than anything else, are well and truly over.