大象传媒

The Credit Crunch is truly biting now, and each day it seems the papers pile doom upon gloom, another once-immovable company goes to the wall and the employment figures reach a new peak.

We've been following the progress of a typical man from Swindon who has been deeply affected by the recent economic downturn. Tom Harrington was once the training manager at the Woolworths warehouse in Dorcan where he'd worked for 11 years.

But now, along with 400 of his colleagues he is out of a job after being made redundant in late 2008.

He said: "We'd been having a hard time at Woolworths for many years and we'd been trying to tighten things up all the way along. Having said that it came as a bolt out of the blue when it was announced we were going into administration."

I thought 'well ok, we'll cope'. I wasn't despondent. But now three months later nothing has come along and I am apprehensive."

Update: Wednesday 18th March

Recently, New College in Swindon hoped to help people facing unemployment by holding an open event called Beat the Recession.

Hundreds of people turned up on the night and one of them was our Tom Harrington. He told 大象传媒 Wiltshire's Mark O'Donnell how he got on.

Update Monday 6th April

It's been a few weeks since we last spoke to Tom. Has he found a job yet? and if not, are there any irons in the fire? Quentin Howard found out.