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A guarantee that anyone unemployed for more than 18 months would be given a job or work placement and 200,000 new jobs and work placements for the unemployed is the manifesto of Ed Balls. The shadow education secretary has played the employment card as he hopes to defeat the two favourites the Miliband brothers, David and Ed, for the prize of the Labour party leadership.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of the Unison public services union, is calling for united action to defeat the government’s "austerity agenda" in one of many TUC attacks on the debt-busting program at Congress. The GMB argues that three-quarters of a million jobs could be at risk.

The South West Regional Development Agency (RDA), which channels millions of pounds into this region’s economy every year, is to be abolished. The coalition said it will replace RDAs with Local Enterprise Partnerships. The South West RDA, which employs about 350 people, is responsible for distributing £230m of European Union funds across the region between 2009 and 2011.

Devon and Cornwall Police have instituted an 18-month recruitment freeze of officers ahead of expected cuts in public-sector funding. Dozens of prospective officers who had recently been accepted into the force have had their application forms scrapped ahead of expected Government national deficit-cutting measures. By the end of the freeze the force could be around 180 officers down.

Government patience seems to have run out with the Audit Commission, which is being axed. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles said the public body, which keeps curbs on council spending, had lost its way. Before that, he publically criticised council moves towards fortnightly bin collections, which was something he put the blame on the Commission.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox said a visit to Afghanistan this week reminded him that supporting British troops on operations had to take priority over spending on staff in Whitehall. He said: "It brought home to me once again that the prime purpose of what we are doing is to make sure that our Armed Forces on the front line have everything they need, and all the support they require, to carry out their mission successfully and safely.

In a cull of around 25 per cent of staff, about 250 jobs are to go in the Welsh assembly government’s department for the economy. The shake-up will reduce the workforce in the department to about 890 civil servants. It follows a review published a month ago, the economic renewal programme, which outlined a major change in the approach to how the assembly government’s economic development budget should be spent.

BT has struck an historic pay settlement to stave off a probable strike, giving employees a 3% raise for an unprecedented three years. BT’s chief executive, Ian Livingstone, said: "This agreement is good for BT, its employees, shareholders and customers. BT will benefit from a long period of certainty whilst our employees will have financial stability during uncertain economic times.

The polling system did not quite work at the recent general election. In a few incidents local polling stations could not get all those who wanted to vote into booths in time, in others it was a close run affair or touch-and-go.

This year’s Glastonbury Festival seemed to proceed safely and securely, as crime fell by more than 50 to just a total of 393 reported crimes at the huge music event compared to last year. Officers handed out free items such as torches to promote personal and property safety. The show requires a huge logistical operation by festival organiser Michael Eavis and his staff to get the hundreds of thousands of people safely in and out and to control the mass crowds.

Those above compulsory school age are entitled to the national minimum wage, which is going up on October 1. The law states that in England and Wales a person is no longer of compulsory school age after the last Friday of June of the school year in which their 16th birthday occurs. Almost all workers in the UK are eligible to the national minimum wage. Those it does not apply to include self-employed people and apprentices under the age of 19.

There are widespread regional variations when it comes to employment levels. Agency the Work Foundation has found sharp rises in claimant counts in local authority areas that have been heavily dependent on long-established industries. The county borough of Blaenau Gwent in South Wales leaped from 4.7 per cent to 8 per cent of people claiming job seeker’s allowance (JSA), the main unemployment benefit, in the space of one year.