As many people may be aware, all civil service departments are currently facing massive job cuts and office closures through out the country. One of the offices that have been named for definite closure is Kirkbys Webster House office. As you can imagine this will not only have a great impact on the staff who work in the office, but also to the members of the local community who rely on the sources that the office provides.

There will remain one office open, St Chad's, but if the numbers of staff are cut there, the services the staff in the last remaining office are supposed to be providing, will suffer greatly. The people of Kirkby will have less of a service than we had, but under new labour this is par for the course.

Many of the members of staff who work in that office are local residents, who work hard for low pay, despite contrary belief. They are certainly not 'bowler hatted bureaucrats', but ordinary members of the public trying to earn a living. Ironically, some staff are themselves recipients of benefits.

Kirkby Times will keep people up to date with this important development. We, as ever, wish all local workers (apart from Sonae's) the best of luck in serving the community. As predicted 3 years ago on this website - new labour are looking to abolish benefits and bring in an American 'new deal' bad deal for the unemployed and the workers. The reason unemployment figures are lower in Kirkby is due to hundreds of Mickey mouse schemes and courses, many of which are compulsory and earn outside agency workers MORE than the trained Job Centre staff. Most jobs now go through agencies and NOT the Job Centre - this is a deliberate ploy to abolish the nationalised job centres and pave the way for greedy privatised agencies to earn a packet for the mostly middle class owners. Liverpool is awash with these agencies/parasites who take a third of a wage just for getting you a job.(check the yellow pages) Years ago most of these jobs would be available in the job centre, and more importantly, because the job centres were publicly owned and run by civil servants, the job and wage being offered was coming direct from whoever was going to employ you. No middle men to suck up your hard earned cash.

Good luck as ever to any local workers, especially those who face more losses of local services. As ever with new labour, they don't give a damn. As stated before, if Unions wish to stand up for workers, then giving subs and support to new labour is tactically naïve. If you are a union member you can ask that the percentage of your subs which go to new labour is diverted elsewhere.