LATEST unemployment figures are due on Wednesday, apparently threatening to kick over the one unadulterated piece of good news since the start of the current marasme in 2007-2008.
Regardless of whether we suffered a double-dip recession or not (it seems the numbers may get sufficiently revised to give us a Tardis trip to 2012 where we will discover how well off we actually were), the big surprise has been the resilience of the labour market.
Now, you will know that I believe part of the reason is that both the public and private sectors are quite seriously overstaffed. One example: nearly two years after an official report suggested getting rid of the routine use of guards on trains, they are (mostly) still there, frantically wittering over the public address system while their conferederates on the platform shout at passengers to stand clear of the carriages, or whatever.
But so what? The outcome is that the job figures have looked a whole lot better than we had any reason to expect in a long-running economic downturn.
Until now.
Numbers released in April were portrayed as maybe the first crack in this happy facade, not least by Reuters, the international news agency, which is at least as trustworthy as the BBC. But closer examination showed the rise was in the broader labour-force survey measure of unemployment rather than what most people regard as unemployment, which is now called the claimant count and which went down.
The former is an internationally agreed (often a bad sign) measure of joblessness while the latter counts those who have (a) claimed unemployment-related welfare payments and (b) been granted them. In other words, this is the 'dole queue' as any person would understand it.
Furthermore, the broader measure really is very dodgy, with some sixth-formers being counted in. Sorry? Back in the scorching summer of '76, when I was 15, I recall being told that, in the morning post to the rather louche boarding house of which I was a member, cheques for supplementary benefit would occasionally arrive for one or two enterprising schoolfellows who had registered themselves as unemployed back home.
Well, not only is the past another country but I'm not sure the story was true in the first place.
There is no such thing as a Platonic definition of unemployment unconnected with the grubby business of claiming benefits. As of now, the claimant count is still falling.
Good.
If that changes on Wednesday, let's jump off that bridge when we get to it.
1) Meet the new boss...
ONE of the odder conventions of police drama is the amnesiac chief officer who (a) loathes the detective-hero and (b) has forgotten by the start of the next episode all the wonderful deeds performed by said hero in the closing minutes of the previous episode.
Think of 'Mr Haskins' in The Sweeney, almost always gunning for the crime-busting Inspector Regan. Think of 'Superintendent Mullett' in A Touch of Frost, bane of the eponymous sleuth Jack Frost.
But taking a whole tin of biscuits has to be Chief Superintendent Bright, top officer in the Inspector Morse prequel Endeavour. Played by the excellent Anton Lesser, his dislike for the inoffensive and hard-working Constable Morse (Shaun Evans) seems boundless.
For the record, in the last three or four episodes, Morse has solved every crime, saved the life of a senior officer (at considerable risk to himself), led an armed police raid on a nightclub and been shot and wounded in the line of duty.
Sack him, why don't you?
2) Cliche alert
HOSPITAL casualty departments are 'at breaking point', according to bossy Tory MP (and doctor, naturally) Sarah Wollaston. 'At breaking point' is one of those phrases you always hear when public-sector axes are being ground (as a young reporter, I recall the police were forever briefing that 'the thin blue line' was 'at breaking point').
Another one is 'all-time low', as in 'teachers' morale is at an all-time low'.
Then there is 'just one X away from', as in 'border-control services are just one above-average bank holiday weekend getaway from total collapse'.
I pay very little attention to any of these claims. I suggest you do the same.
3) Hub-ble hubble, toil and trouble
THE 'urgent question' of how to increase London's airport capacity has, apparently, to be addressed in order to ensure Heathrow (or any replacement) remains a 'hub airport'. The great danger, apparently, is that 'hub' status will pass to airports in the Netherlands, or France, or Germany. Or someplace.
In other words, if we refuse to despoil our environment to accommodate more aeroplanes, other countries may despoil their own.
What a terrible threat.
I suggest the next time an aerocrat starts burbling on in this inane fashion, you tell them to hub off.
Thanks again for reading and enjoy the weekend.
Going South: Why Britain Will Have A Third World Economy By 2014, by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson is published by Palgrave Macmillan