[speaker001:] the British housing market. First, new supplements, price cuts, and free C Ds, all attempts to boost circulation. But who's going to win the newspaper war?
[Peter:] Six o'clock this morning at a West London newsagent, they're unpacking the revamped Independent on Sunday. It's the latest foray in a fierce Fleet Street circulation war. Which is costing newspapers tens of millions of pounds in investment. With extra section and money back guarantee, the Independent's also gone up in price becoming the most expensive weekend paper.
[Andreas ?:] This Sunday first of all, the Sunday newspaper will get quite a lot of colour into its pages and will be expanded, and secondly the daily paper, starting next Tuesday, will become a two section newspaper with about twenty wee twenty pages a week extra.
[Peter:] While the Independent's raising prices, Rupert Murdoch's cutting them at the Sun and the Times. Fuelling market competition.
[Andrew:] This is the most competitive, choice ridden anarchic industry. Er newspaper industry in the world. There isn't another country where you get eleven daily newspapers published by seven or eight different publishers, every single morning.
[Peter:] Today also saw the launch of the Mail on Sunday's new up-market tabloid review. And next Saturday, the Daily Mail's going to have one too.
[David:] We are going to see a supplement war and only the strongest and the most confident and the best produced will really come out of these in a in a good way.
[Peter:] These fashionable tabloid supplements are one of the key weapons in this circulation war. And whether it's new sections, price cutting, more sports pages or simply giving away compact discs, everybody's at it, offering their readers better and better value for money. The problem is, the competition's become so fierce, it's pushing up newspaper's costs at an alarming rate. For some, this burst of competitive expansion seems bound to end in tears. A major reason papers are fighting so haar for readers is the decline in sales as families like the buy fewer papers. Hello.
[Anita:] Hi.
[Peter:] How is it going?
[Anita:] Fine thanks.
[Peter:] It's been most noticeable in the Sunday market. But since nineteen eighty seven, daily paper sales are down by more than a tenth. Changing working habits and increased competition for leisure time mean that many people feel they simply don't have the time any more.
[Anita:] During the week I certainly buy fewer papers now than previously. Perhaps it's got to do with the fact that I have er four children, I really do not have the time to sit down and read papers in depth.
[Peter:] I work a very long hours. Er it means generally that I'm coming home quite late, so as far as a daily paper's concerned, I'm really not very much interested. But the most worrying trend for newspapers is the sharp decline in young readers. Over the past twenty years, the number who look at papers has fallen by more than a quarter. Partly due to television.
[Paul:] I read a paper about once a fortnight. And if I do read a paper it won't be for for very long because all the stuff it's got in it I've seen it one telly or heard on the radio.
[Anita:] In my family we always read the Sunday papers. Always. And the erm quality papers during the week. But I have been quite fascinated to see that the youngsters today do not seem to have the same interest in reading the paper. They read the cartoons but after that the reading seems to be fairly limited.
[Peter:] Now there's a new threat looming, the prospect of value added tax on newspapers in the budget. It's already causing howls of outrage from the industry.
[David:] It will be devastating whatever happens. If the industry absorbs it, it will wipe out virtually all profits. If it doesn't absorb it it will cut horrendously into circulation figures in my view. Because there's never been a time before when all newspapers have gone up simultaneously.
[Andrew:] We've had to cut prices of some of our newspapers in order to prevent a decline in circulation. Er and I suspect some of our competitors may have to do so as well. That's a very odd moment for the government to load on up to seventeen and a half percent er there which would er threaten I think, the existence of a number of newspapers, particularly in the provinces but also possible at the national level and that would be a great shame.
[Peter:] The Times' price was slashed by a third last month to boost flagging circulation. Rivals say it's costing the Murdoch empire millions, when the Times is already loss making. The Independent's even reported News International for predatory pricing.
[Andreas ?:] The only way you can make sense of it is that it's it's design to get a competitor out of the market. And as we're the one small Independent group which has no huge er group wrapped round us, then we're clearly the most vulnerable.
[Peter:] News International denies that's its aim. And although Times sales are up about one hundred thousand in a month, it doesn't seem to have had a big impact on the Independent. The real target, News International says, is the highly profitable middle market.
[Andrew:] The Mail and Express are very different newspapers from the Times, but nevertheless the top fractions of their readerships are very very high quality readers. And I think we've seen a good number of those erm from the Telegraph, the Mail and the Express, going to the Times.
[Peter:] Because the Times price cut was so large, no-one's sure if its gains are due to the publicity, or it's proved wrong the conventional wisdom about quality newspaper pricing.
[Richard:] In a sense, the Jury's still out on the Times cos you'd have to look at it over say a three of four month period. Erm but I think it's we've looked at historical trends and you find that the quality newspapers, the up-market newspapers, they're actually not particularly price sensitive. [music]
[Peter:] The Mail and its sister Sunday paper are broadening their appeal with up-market news supplements. A huge investment for Associated Newspapers. it expects them to lose a staggering twenty million pounds in the first year.... But Associated Newspapers reckons it's well worth it.
[David:] I believe that you that you must never stand still in newspapers, you have to keep committing, you have to keep expanding and you halve to go with trends and there is a trend for this kind of publication. Not just in erm the world of advertising but in in the readership as well. We've seen it in the er erm broadsheet up-market papers. Erm I think the time is right for a big broad middle market paper to have such a publication.
[Peter:] The Mail's big rival, the Express is doing much the same. Trying to attract the readers from the quality market, while the broadsheet papers nibble at the middle ground.
[Richard:] If you look at the Sunday qualities, they're very much erm popularizing some of their content. We've seen the Sunday Times for example, introducing horoscopes and more articles on the Royal Family. If you look at the mid-markets erm for example the Sunday Express has recently run a erm a feature on the French philosopher Louis. Which would have Previously would have been the preserve only of papers like the Independent or the Times or the or the Guardian.
[Andreas ?:] I think the er figures also suggest in a way that
[Peter:] For the struggling independent papers, adding papers is aimed at securing the top of the market. Strapped for cash and investment, circulation of daily and Sunday has slid alarmingly. The reliance is aimed to reverse that.
[speaker009:] broadsheet because we can display photographs much more effectively on broadsheet and of course we'll have colour.
[Peter:] With the group only breaking even, having lucrative colour advertising is crucial. And the higher cover prices will boost annual revenue by four million pounds if sales hold up. Helping pay for the new promotion. At premium prices, the independent papers are opting firmly for the high ground.
[speaker009:] The new Independent on Sunday, are you getting the full story?
[Andreas ?:] The long term trend is that it's actually going to be more room at the top of the market I think. And that's very good from our point of view.
[Peter:] Rasing prices when others are cutting is a bold, high risk strategy. Butt what's at stake is whether the Independent has to raise capital again, and whether it could do so without someone else taking control. Associated Newspapers admit, they might be interested. And other potential investors include Carlton Communications and the Mirror. But Sir David English says, they'd want control and then, only at the right price.
[David:] You ask how interested we are, we're interested. I suppose we we would run the Independent as a professional publication, but it would be run at a loss for a very long time before you could turn it around. And we'd only be interested i with that scenario that you could virtually er get the Independent at a song otherwise it wouldn't be worth having.
[Andrew:] The question that is raised about the Independent, is not whether it exists, but who owns it. What the Independent very badly needs is very solid professional newspaper management er to go along with the good franchise which it has created erm and a proper owner who can actually er do what all of us in newspapers have to do from times to times which is back a promising newspaper.
[Peter:] With so many papers pinning so much on these costly strategies to lure in new readers, will it all add up? Newspapers make their money from combination of cover price revenue and what they bring in from selling advertising space. So it's the behaviour of both consumers and advertisers which will determine the winners and losers. Advertisers love the new sections because they provide choice and make it easier to target advertising at specialist audiences. But with so many new sections being launched, is there enough advertising to go round? Although advertising is picking up after the recession, most in the industry only expect fairly modest growth.
[speaker009:] I think what we're probably gonna see is a redistribution of the cake, but not much growth in that cake. And and I think we might see it in one of two ways. We might see advertisers that currently use black and white advertising space move more into colour to take on or or make use of these er other sections, these review sections. And we might see movement within the colour segments of a newspaper. I E from the supplements into the review sections.
[Peter:] At the end of the day, is there going to be enough new advertising to go round?
[speaker009:] I think w we may well see some kind of shake out. Whether it's gonna take two years or twelve months I don't know.
[Peter:] Equally important in deciding the outcome of the circulation war, is how consumers like the 's react. something to do with water Sonia?
[speaker009:] Yeah.
[Peter:] Like everyone, they appreciate better value for money but as the newspapers have got bigger and bigger, they have found they have bought fewer.
[Anita:] A number of years ago, I would have bought two papers on a Sunday, the Observer and the Sunday Times. But it was too much reading, really couldn't get through it all.
[Richard:] If you look at the industry as a whole, there's obviously the problem that by producing so much more content that people are are simply not going to have the time to get through it. So as a result, there's a danger that many readers many regular readers, might buy a newspaper less frequently. So move from buying it every d every weekday say to moving it f to to buying it four days a week.
[Peter:] Everyone in the industry agrees that quality will be the key to success and of course they all say that means them. Deep pockets are going to count as well. But there's no doubt this fierce circulation battle is going to claim casualties. For some, that could mean heavy losses for others it may be more serious. [music]
[speaker001:] Workplace stress is sweeping across industry. It's costing the country more than seven billion pounds a year, with millions of working days lost. Are British firms reacting too slowly to a problem that could one day land them in court? [music]
[Peter:] I didn't realize at the time when I was getting headaches, migraines. You know real bad headaches. And er terrible indigestion. Well indigestion, it was terrible pains down my chest just as though you'd swallowed glass and every now and again it would sort of stab at you. And er I wasn't eating right because I just didn't feel hungry I didn't bother about food I just seemed to keep going and keep going. Keep taking the paracetamols and the blooming Rennies. And then er I just completely broke down one night, I just couldn't take any more pressure.
[speaker001:] Farm work means long hours and low pay but it's a great improvement on last year for David Smith. Then he was ploughing a very different furrow. Working in a Staffordshire plastics factory. He'd moved up from shop floor worker to production manager but the firm hit hard times an the receivers were called in. David found himself caught between the demands of the receivers on the one hand and his old boss, who stayed on as a consultant.
[Peter:] I was trying to keep the workforce happy and keep every body in a job. Trying to keep our old boss happy and trying to keep the receivers happy but it just doesn't work like that, you can't keep everybody happy.
[speaker001:] David's life is now in balance with time to follow to the country pursuits like shooting he loves. For him, the low point came with a telephone call from the factory. telling of yet more problems. He broke down on the bed at home and sobbed uncontrollably. He left the firm soon after, one of thousands of victims of occupational stress. Did you ever think of suing the firm for the stress problems that you'd been caused.
[Peter:] No I never thought about suing the the No I never thought I didn't realize you could anyway. No I didn't know you could. I wasn't advised or nobody mentioned it.
[speaker001:] That may soon change. Lawyer Mark Scoggins advises some of our biggest insurance companies on workplace liabilities, he believes workers could soon be able to sue for stress damage, costing British firms and their insurers, millions.
[Andreas ?:] Thirty years ago, employers didn't take seriously the risk of being sued for deafness. Ten years ago, they didn't take seriously the risk of being sued for passive smoking. It cost them a fortune in both cases. If they ignore the risk of workplace stress claims, it may cost them another fortune.
[speaker001:] Delegates from some of the biggest companies in the land gather at a Confederation of British Industry conference on health at work. Workplace stress is on the increase, and ironically it's now being widely recognized that companies own efforts to cut staff and become leaner and fitter, must take part of the blame.
[Andrew:] At the end of the day we are asking so much more of our employees nowadays than we've ever done before. We ask them to be multi- skilled, we ask them to use new technology, we ask them to be obsessed as they should be with quality add customer service. Those trends can cause stress if they're not properly managed.
[speaker001:] Every year in Britain, ninety million working days are lost as a result off undue stress in the workplace. That's thirty times more than through strikes. Most British firms even if they recognize the problem, don't do anything about it. But in the wake of legal precedents from America, the prospect of workers suing their employers for stress related illnesses could soon be a real one. In that case, big firms and their insurers would have to sit up and take notice or pay the consequences. the canning line at Scottish and Newcastle's lager brewery in Manchester.... it's one of the sites where Professor Cary Cooper, a world authority on stress, carried out Britain's biggest ever company wide stress study. he believes it's important to distinguish between stress and pressure.
[David:] Stress is not pressure. Pressure is stimulating, it gets you moving and achieving things but when pressure exceeds you ability to cope, then you're in the stress arena. And that means that you're doing maladaptive things. Either it's causing ill health or it's affecting your relationships.
[speaker001:] Stress at work is costing industry billions. Official estimates include the value of lost production through absenteeism when stress makes people ill. And the cost of sickness benefits. But there are other factors.
[David:] I think the bottom line cost for U K P L C er the Health and Safety Exe Executive estimates this to be seven and a half billion pounds a year. I think that's an under-representation of it. Because what we don't have is people turning up to work because they're afraid they'll lose their job during these recessionary times. They turn up to work but are so stressed out they can't perform, there's no added value to the product. The cost in my view is probably in the order of ten percent of Gross National product.
[speaker009:] Your workload? what about it? It's too much. I can't cope.
[speaker001:] A training video made for Zeneca, the pharmaceutical group recently demerged from I C I. With stress management courses like this, it's one of the few big companies trying to tackle the problem.
[speaker009:] Can't cope eh? Never mind, we'll find something for you. Of course it will mean a drop in salary but you needn't worry about the extra stress that goes with promotion [shouting] because there won't be any promotion for you ever again [].
[speaker001:] The idea's to teach managers to spot the symptoms of stress early. And know how to deal with them. The courses have cost Zeneca a hundred thousand pounds so far but the company believes to ignore the problem, particularly at executive level, would be costlier still.
[Anita:] There is the obvious cost if people are away ill. We know that er stress er does cause exacerbation of other illnesses and er people can be away for that sort of reason. But on top of that, if people are under undue stress, they make mistakes. And making mistakes in important contracts if they involve w hundreds of millions of business can be very expensive indeed.
[speaker001:] The Thresher wines and spirits warehouse at Dunstable. Part of the Whitbread brewing group. here they believe the problem has to be tackled at the lower levels of the organization. That's because people on the shop floor suffer more from stress as they've much less control over what they're doing than those in the executive suite. So these warehousemen are among fifteen Whitbread staff signed up for what's called an employee assistance program or E A P. Any time Thresher staff have a problem in or out of work, they can call an outside consultancy, focus.
[speaker009:] Good morning Focus employee assistance, can I help you?
[speaker001:] E A Ps originated in America and typically cost a company fifteen to twenty pounds per head every year. But the bottom line savings through reduced staff turnover can be much greater.
[Peter:] We estimate that it costs about fourteen thousand pounds to to train er and and recruit our our management staff. Erm now if you lose one of those people cos we we put a lot of emphasis on you know, high quality training, erm then that money is just wasted. And er fourteen thousand pounds will pay for an awful lot of employee assistance.
[speaker001:] But do you know that it's actually saved you from losing any of these employees.
[Peter:] Yes I I have er our management in inns erm believe that it is one of the major factors which is helping them to reduce their management turnover. And if you let's suppose we save save you know, ten managers, I mean that's going to be a hundred and forty thousand pounds. One of Whitbread's restaurant T G I Fridays. Ian Anderson is a long way from his aim of getting all parts off the group to enrol on the E A P scheme. After five years, only a quarter of Whitbread's workers are included. Today he is trying to get T G I's twelve hundred staff on board. But it's tough to persuade cost conscious managers like T G I's Alison Finnegan, the expense is justified.
[Paul:] So Ian, in terms of my selling this into my executive, bottom line tangibility's going to be a real issue.
[Peter:] Yeah.
[Paul:] What are the real erm success criteria measurement criteria that that we can really see.
[Peter:] It's difficult to measure in precise terms but having this employee assistance programme I think will help you attract staff, it'll certainly help you retrain staff
[speaker001:] T G I's has now been persuaded but companies like these trying to deal with workplace stress are very much the exception. In recessionary times most British firms have had other priorities.
[Peter:] It is very difficult to you know persuade boards there to in to put money into the start-up of a an employee assistance programme. Erm and what er I would argue and certainly do argue internally in Whitbread is that this should be seen as an investment. And that the the return from the investment in the employee assistance programme will be many many er much much more than it would be er the actual cost of running it.
[David:] Oh hi.
[speaker009:] Hello how are you?
[David:] Fine how are you?
[speaker009:] I'm fine
[speaker001:] At UMIST in Manchester, Professor Cary Cooper believes there's one way to really make more firms take the matter seriously. he believes cumulative stress which builds up over time, should be classified as an industrial injury for which people can claim compensation. As with traumatic stress, the sort that can happen when you witness a bomb explosion or serious accident.
[David:] We have accepted for a long time that traumatic stress incidents are the basis of an industrial injury claim. The larger number of claims and a larger problem out there is with the cumulative trauma. The building up of job insecurity, the building up of the stress of a bad boss. Of a blocked career. And so on. Those are the bigger problems and in my view, those are real industrial injuries, costing a lot of money. And should be treated as an industrial injury. [music]
[speaker001:] San Francisco California. In some American states, the idea of suing your employer for the effects of stress is a well established fact of life. Here when a worker suffers mental of physical problems as a result off stress at work, the first thing he or she does is reach for his lawyer. The number of mental stress claims has increased more than tenfold over the past decade. That's far faster than any other type of workplace injury claim. The cost to California business has now reached seven hundred and fifty million dollars. That's half a billion pounds every year. one of those claims is from John Grainger, a former manager at a glass bottle factory in Oakland. He found the escalating pressure of trying to solve a string of production problems there, got too much. He's since suffered from lack off concentration and has been virtually unable to work. The company's already agreed a health care and pensions package. Now he's off with wife Donna to see his lawyer Mike Gerson to check progress on the legal case being pursued under California's worker's compensation laws.
[Richard:] There is a possibility that I may er receive a oh an award of maybe fifteen thousand. Er with the possibility of a maximum award of two hundred and twenty four dollars a week for life. Erm I've been off work in excess of five years now er add my income has been very very small and whatever award I get will never go ahead and compensate me or my wife for what I've been through.
[speaker009:] Er you're entitled to go through some sort of training programme
[speaker001:] Proving the effects of stress and who's to blame can be difficult, though Mike Gerson had little problem in Mr Grainger's case. It was simply a matter of getting at least two doctors to agree.
[speaker009:] It's based on medical fact add and medical evidence based on er factual evidence reviewed by physicians. Er psychiatry has come a long way and er certain diagnostic st studies and diagnostic tests are taken of the individual erm and the doctors conclude whether or not the the work contributed to the problem or not.
[speaker001:] The launch of President Clinton's much vaunted health care plan with its ambitious aim of affordable health care for all.
[speaker009:] I believe as strongly as I can say that we can reform the costliest and most wasteful system on the face of the earth without enacting new broad based taxes.
[speaker001:] Because it's been linked to so many other illnesses like heart disease and ulcers, stress is thought to indirectly account for as much as a third of all U S health-care costs. Rising stress claims have also been bad news for big employers like Wells Fargo Bank, the California institution which echoes back to the stage coach era. So the state has no had to tighten up the law to cut the cost. Faced with premiums of twelve million dollars next year, Wells Fargo's even planning to go without compensation insurance. Funding employee claims itself. I would say that most insured employers in California have experienced an increase of probably double over the last five years in premiums. Erm a lot of employers are looking at self funding because the m They can manage their own money and it's much more efficient to do so and then they also have a lot more control over the management of the claims themselves because they select their own management corporation. And they can manage teem internally. So it's simply too expensive to pay the insurance premium? Yes it can be. Some American firms like this San Francisco based bakery company Just Deserts, have realized that a more visionary approach may be required to combat the stress problem. Going above and beyond what's already been tried in Britain. Here they're trying to literally redesign people's jobs. To try and reduce the potential for stress to build up in the first place. Physical strain often leads to mental stress so the company's eliminated some awkward repetitive tasks. Director Barbara Radcliffe showed me one off the old processes.
[Peter:] Well here is hand scooping a cake batter. Er as you can see, the wrist action that she does is very difficult erm stressful, we do it many times a day. And she's elevated the bowl so that it's not hurting her back but generally this ar this function is very hard on the wrists and on the back.
[speaker001:] This is how they now do it.
[Peter:] Here we have Brian using a depositor er to get this batter into the pans. You may think this is a productivity issue but in fact erm our purpose here is to save stress on the individual.
[speaker001:] And does it actually do that?
[Peter:] Yes I think that it does.
[speaker001:] Just the physical stress with the elbow, the wrist
[Peter:] The wrist and the back, the lifting. there's still lifting involved as you can see.
[speaker001:] But it's a lot easier.
[Peter:] But it's much easier.
[speaker001:] in addition, Just Deserts now rotates jobs more frequently, holds employee exercise sessions and carries out regular opinion surveys of staff to find out what changes they want made. It's also hired to new supervisors to increase training and ease managerial stress. It's all helped cut accidents at work and stress claims.
[Peter:] It's allowed us to maintain er costs of of our worker's compensation insurance, erm our estimated premium is somewhere around four hundred and thirty five thousand dollars. Erm we have a discount currently about twenty percent. This has allowed us to keep that discount and work toward perhaps improving that discount.
[speaker001:] So your costs in insurance are much lower than many other comparable firms?
[Peter:] Yes. We've managed to keep our costs in line where others have seen theirs skyrocket.
[speaker001:] Back in Britain, there are those who believe an American style legalistic approach to problems of workplace stress could soon be coming over here too. Employers have a statutory duty to provide a safe workplace and it's only a matter of a judge's interpretation to decide that that should include mental as well as physical health.
[Andreas ?:] I mean I've no doubt that my health suffered as a result of the the conditions that I worked under and I think
[speaker001:] Former junior doctor Chris Johnstone's pioneering the legal approach by taking his old employer, Bloomsbury Health Authority to court, backed by the British medical Association's Chris Finlon. He'd had to work well over a hundred hours a week for weeks on end.
[Andreas ?:] I was injured
[speaker009:] Mm.
[Andreas ?:] as a result of the conditions that I worked under.
[speaker009:] Mm.
[Andreas ?:] From er re repeated stress repeated strain of of continuous long periods of sleep deprivation.
[speaker001:] Dr Johnstone says, the principle behind this important test case is a relatively straightforward one.
[Andreas ?:] It's it's on the basis that any employer has a duty of care to employees and what I mean by that is that er an employer has a responsibility to not work employers er er employees under conditions that that are known to be unsafe. Erm the the the expression has been used, if you don't like the heat in the kitchen, get out. But of your kitchen workers are working under conditions of such such great heat that that that they're being burnt by it and and this can be avoided then employers have got a legal obligation to to to sa to make safe conditions.
[speaker001:] The government's watching the outcome of this case and is now taking mental stress at work very seriously. As Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley told the C B I's health conference.
[Andrew:] careful development of company mentalness programmes can allow many of those issues to be addressed sensibly and sensitively. Early recognition as I say of mental illness in an employee and early treatment is better for both the company and the employee. Business can't afford the cost
[speaker001:] Within the next few weeks, guidelines to employers on best practice will be issued both from Mrs Bottomley's department and from the Health and Safety Executive. City lawyer mark Scoggins believes these guidelines will be highly significant. Even those they won't be legally binding. They'll mean ignorance of best practice will no longer be a defence for companies in any future legal action by an employee. That means, any such claims will be much more likely to succeed.
[Andreas ?:] Traditionally, the pattern erm in the pattern goes in a particular way. there is research, there is interest, there is then guidelines from the Health and Safety Executive. As soon as those are published, employers are put on notice that there are steps they really ought to be taking. From then until the first claims coming in, anything between five and ten years.
[speaker001:] At T G I Friday's they're preparing for another busy day's trading. The idea of being sued by stressed out workers is something most employers find very unwelcome. Surprisingly though some like Whitbread back the principle. Despite the difficulties and potential cost.
[Peter:] I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be able to sue i if it can be proved that er the employer has caused undue stress on on an employee. Er but it's a very new area. Erm I mean even in in in America where there are some claims coming through now, particularly in California, I mean i i they are still finding it extremely difficult to prove.
[Anita:] I've had first hand er experience of the States because I've worked there for a couple of years. And I would be the last person to advocate that we follow the American practice of litigation er to the extremes that they pursue it in the States. Er but the fact that people can sue their employers if they are suffering from stress, is a reality in the States. I don't see it erm becoming an issues in an organization such as our own because er we have recognized its er potential harmful effects and have taken steps to counter it.
[speaker009:] The word relax is the signal to instantly release our tension.
[speaker001:] The Zeneca stress course ends with special relaxation exercises. The efforts companies like this are making, may help their defence is stress claims do materialize. Firms that try to ignore the problem could have no defence at all. Costing teem and their liability insurers dear.
[speaker009:] Hold your breath, now sit forward a couple of inches and now tense up all over the body, tighter, tighter. Just hold it.... And relax. To release that tension.
[Andreas ?:] If employers ignore advice and subsequently it emerges that it was a real problem, that steps should have been taken, that research elsewhere showed it to be a reasonable system to look after employees mental health, then the scale is potentially enormous. Certainly of of the size of of the desn deafness claims that we had in the nineteen eighties and will continue to have for the rest of this er of this century.
[speaker001:] So we're talking about tens or hundreds of millions of pounds.
[Andreas ?:] The theoretical potential is is of that order.
[speaker001:] Zeneca's laboratories in Cheshire. few British companies are yet following the example set here. Soon though, it may not be a matter off enlightened management to tackle the stress problem, so much as commercial necessity. [music]
[David:] If the housing market is some kind of barometer for the rest of the economy, it may be time for a mile sigh of relief. There's not talk of the market bottoming out. But is it a false dawn. In recent years, nothing has twisted and turned quite like the British housing market. it's a tale easily told. This is the house that Jack bought. This is the boom that padded the price of the house that Jack bought. This is the bust that exploded the boom that padded the price of the house that Jack bought. This is the chap that lost his job because of the car that Jack didn't buy because of the fall in the price of the house that Jack bought. This is the house market flat on its back because of the boom that caused the bust that lost the jobs that paid for the loans that bought the house that Jack bought. Well that dreary tale may be over the worst now. If the latest figures from Britain's biggest building society are to be believed. The Halifax says that in September the average price of a house in this country was up by one percent on the same time last year. The first time there's actually been a year on year rise since the beginning of nineteen ninety one. The trouble is there are all sorts of qualifications to statistics like these. How real are they? The Halifax is but one among many lenders, the second biggest society, the Nationwide actually reported a fall in prices in September, on the very day the Halifax said they'd risen. And in a market actually made up of thousands of distinct locations, an average house price is something that exists only in the statistics. But just as the housing market quivers to life, along comes a new threat to house prices and another axe for the mortgage lenders to grind. As the budget looms, the chancellor seems to be looking again at the feasibility of raising money for the government, by ending the tax relief on mortgages of up to thirty thousand pounds. Sudden moves from the government can cause terrible trouble in the housing market, in this case fr first time buyers faced with bigger bills. When Chancellor Nigel Lawson stopped double mortgage tax relief in the Summer of nineteen eighty eight, he caused a frantic scramble to buy homes that proved to be the final boom before the housing bubble burst. Chancellor Kenneth Clarke will have to tread more warily if he isn't to destabilize the housing market which has only touched bottom. Underlying all this is a more fundamental problem, during the heady nineteen eighties, the British home owner positively salivated at the idea of the monthly advance in the so called value of his or her property. It was an amazing spectacle, a country not just unworried by but positively enjoying inflation. The house price collapse of the last few years has been a terrible dose of cold turkey for the home owning classes, but has it been a long enough agony to drive out the idea that there's something inherently beneficial about rising house prices. When next they start going up month by month, will the headlines trumpet, Good news for home owners? Or will the trend be seen for what it really is? A serious threat to economic stability. We could be back to the boom that led to the crash that lost the job that paid for the house that Jack bought. [recording ends]