The North's Spending Review - public sector pain and green jobs
There will be pain in the form of significant numbers of public sector job losses.
Councils will face deep cuts. More than 7% will be shaved off their budgets for each of the next four years.
Our police forces will also be hit, losing 4% a year.
Union estimates of 30,000 public sector job losses in the North East alone then look a reasonable guess, even if some will be lost through natural wastage rather than forced redundancies.
But it will also get investment in new green jobs.
The Prime Minister revealed as much as he answered several questions from North East MPs even before the Chancellor had got on his feet.
He was pressed by Darlington MP, Jenny Chapman, to name three North East companies who would be employing more people in a year's time.
He said the Chancellor would be revealing that capital spending on new green jobs would be protected.
And he delivered, saying there would be £200m invested in helping the manufacture of offshore wind turbines in the country's ports.
So plans to build new turbines at ports on the Tyne and Tees could well get the funding they need.
Pilots on carbon capture and clean coal which could come to the region will also be protected.
But as yet there's no specific news on plans by Hitachi to build a new generation of express trains in County Durham.
That's a plan that could create 800 jobs directly, and many more in the supply chain. Some have called it a "New Nissan".
And some of the announcements we'd heard before.
The hundreds of millions of pounds being invested in the were reannounced, as was the investment in the revamp of the West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven.
There was though news of a pilot to bring superfast broadband to rural Cumbria, something that will please Penrith and the Border MP Rory Stewart.
But the question is will it be enough to cushion the blow of losing so many public sector jobs?
And there the North mirrors the problem in the whole country.
The Chancellor is hoping the private sector grows fast enough to replace the jobs being lost in this Spending Review.
Around 13,000 public sector workers are based at Longbenton in Newcastle but how many will keep their jobs?
But the private sector itself could be hit by the deep cuts in public spending.
It is a gamble. A gamble says it has to take to put the public finances right.
But the Lib Dem side of the Coalition will be watching nervously to see just how high unemployment will rise.
Many, like Cumbrian MP Tim Farron, want the cuts to be scaled back if there's evidence of the economy slipping back into recession.
But can the Coalition really row back from here?
The die is cast, the North's dependence on the public sector must end or it will face growing unemployment.
I'm Richard Moss, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Political Editor for the North East and Cumbria. Welcome to my irreverent - but hopefully insightful - northern take on reporting politics for Look North and the Politics Show.
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