[Chris]

Exporting jobs to India is a little off topic in this case. Dixons is closing retail stores in the UK because the chain is under-performing, not because they are outsourcing any work overseas. There would be little point in opening a branch in Bangalore in the hope of selling more TVs to the people of Stepney.

The problems of NTL, Shell and Dixons are all quite separate. UK plc is actually in good health at the moment and it would be wrong to present these three cases collectively as proof that 2004 will be a bad year for redundancies. What has happened to these three, in summary, is:

Ntl: As we all know, our favourite cableco cripped itself with debt and avoided bankruptcy by making its debtors its new shareholders. Now the banks and other money lenders want some value out of their unwitting investment and ntl is cutting back very hard on costs to try to improve profit.

Shell: In serious trouble after over-estimating its volume of oil reserves, and on discovering the problem spending months trying to cover it up. Having finally come clean, it is having to cut costs to remedy the fact that the true value of the business can now be seen to be far less rosy than was believed.

Dixons: 106 of its smaller stores are closing despite group profit being up 14% on last year and on target for this year's business plan. The stores are all within 5 miles of another, bigger store, have each underperformed and do not fit the company's development plan for the Dixons brand. The message here, sadly for those who will lose their jobs, seems to be 'good, but not good enough.' On a happier note, the company hopes to find 'most' of the staff jobs in other stores. So of these three, Dixons staff appear to be getting off the lightest.