Northern Rock Will Axe Up To 650 Geordie Jobs To Aid Privatisation

Newcastle based Northern Rock have announced that 650 people will lose their jobs, the vast majority of  whom will be based in Newcastle, as well as many in Sunderland.

These cuts are thought to be related to the governments wishes of re-privatising the bank only years after it failed in the private sector, causing more redundancies and fears that savings would be lost.

It is not fair that banks, as well as public transport and utilities, which people depend on are operated with the sole objective being to make money off already hard-pressed people - These services should be ran by the government with a sole business objective of being able to provide a public service which doesn't cost the earth.

If all of the banks were in the public sector and greedy bankers were not exploiting the savings of ordinary people to push up their profit margins, the economic crisis would not have been as bad and these 650 people as well as countless others elsewhere would not shortly be out of work.

Evidence such as the rising prices of public transport and utilities, the poorer quality service and just to rub salt in the wounds - the ever increasing profits for the very few at the top of these companies - shows that the privatisation experiments of successive governments have failed.

The only way to guarantee that the ordinary, decent people of Britain get a fair deal and to increase people's job security so this does not happen in these companies is to bring our utilities, transport companies and of course banks back under government control and not to privatise those services already in the public sector.