Since the start of the year 1 in 4 of redundancies in the EU have been in the UK. Out of 219,390 job losses in the EU, 63,314 were in the UK. This makes grim reading for us Brits.

Particularly badly hit, was the financial sector where firms like Barclays, Sun Alliance, The Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC actioned swingeing job cuts and the retail sector where current forecasts indicate that there will be 139,000 empty shops by the end of this year – equivalent to 15% of the UK’s total retail floor space.

And in the next few weeks we will also learn what is to happen to Vauxhall. With 5,000 workers in its UK factories and probably three times that number employed indirectly in the UK, there’s potentially another 20,000 jobs down the drain. Let’s hope that our Government have really got guarantees from the bidders that these factories will stay open.

Somehow I have my doubts.