A desperate blow for workers who deserve far better
It is one of the first things drummed into cub reporters arriving at the School for Young Newshounds.
Right after they are told to check everything, assume nothing, put a press card in their trilby and practise their shorthand, they are told to never, ever describe anywhere as remote. “It’s not remote,” their grizzled Lou Grant-a-like tutors will bark, “to the people who live there.”
So, Annan is not remote to the 8500-ish people who live there but, after the south of Scotland’s biggest private employer announced devastating job losses last week, the town should have felt close to home for every one of Scotland’s politicians.
So no, Annan is not remote, but people living there know their voices will need to be louder than most to carry 90 miles to Edinburgh or 340 to London, for their pleas for help to be heard in Holyrood and Westminster.
It has only been a few days since Young’s Seafood announced the loss of 450 jobs when they close the Pinneys factory.
But, as we reveal today, the job losses could climb much further to 500, even 600. That is the equivalent of 48,000 jobs going in Glasgow overnight, 41,000 in Edinburgh, 18,000 in Aberdeen, and 12,000 in Dundee.
It would be fair to say, redundancies on that scale would have sparked more urgent calls for action. Taskforces would have been launched along with petitions, campaigns and crisis talks. It would have been seen as a national emergency, a potentially lethal blow to the economies of our biggest cities.
Well, our small towns, towns like Annan, deserve the same urgency, the same attention and the same assistance.
Dumfries and Galloway isn’t remote but it is struggling. It is the lowest-paid region in Scotland. At the bottom of Scotland it has twice as many people with no qualifications as the Highlands at the top.
The economy is fragile, families are struggling, and there are legitimate fears that the Young’s closure will be a tipping point, will, in the graphic words of one of the people we spoke to in Annan, turn their town into a ghost town.
The supply chain that fills the shelves of Marks & Spencer and our other food stores is brutal and unforgiving as retail firms use their buying muscle to shave every penny from their bills.
But Joan Mcalpine is right to turn the spotlight onto M&S and its role in this looming catastrophe.
They are Young’s only customer. Their demands are driving decisions and those decisions will decimate a town.
If they can find another way, they should. If they cannot, the town they abandon will judge them. So will we all.