BBC News run a little story on Limavady

Now that unemployment is now at 6.1% in Limavady (or as they like to put it, the highest in Northern Ireland).

The report does play heavily on the Seagate closure but fails to mention that from the 900 made redundant, not all of them were from Limavady. Some were from Derry, some Coleraine, some commuted in from Donegal. Seagate is not single handedly responsible for Limavady's track record.

Construction was a key area and as farming declined construction blossomed. The knock on effect was felt as tilers, estate agents and other related industries gained. Then it stopped and then knock on went into reverse. The subsequent knock on from that, shops went into decline and started to close. Trading was down.

The BBC stats don't paint a pretty picture:

• 22,000 people of a working age in the borough.
• 6.1% unemployed.
• 23.6% of redundancies were in Limavady (but does not say how many of that 23.6% are resident in the borough).
• 1,348 are currently looking for work compared to 611 a year ago.
  

For eagle eyed readers of this blog you'll know from this morning that there are 12 jobs listed for Limavady. Paul Beattie does make a good point that Limavady is a good place for doing business, because it is. There is a very good training background in Limavady that does a very good job in providing quality training for the essential skills required.

I have a love/hate with this article. It does highlight the positives about Limavady but that's outweighed by the "isn't ever so slightly crap at the moment" attitude of the reporter.

Currently the unemployed need some sense of honour and sense of worth (I know exactly what it's like because I've been there twice over the last three years). Biggest failing in all of this I see is the reliance on the job market to pick up, some experts are not expecting this until a potential peak at the end of 2010. The initiative has to come from you, yourself.

If you have an idea then go for it. Whether it be an online venture or what, a shop, a home based business. Big investment coming in takes time. Putting time aside to help rural startups is something that's never addressed. Rest assured that Invest NI will not give you money for the Start A Business Programme but you might get valuable support.

If you are stuck for an idea, well there's over 1000 listed on OneForTen. It was the very reason I put the site together in the first place. I can't do every idea that's listed so it makes sense to distribute them to people who can. You have nothing to lose, go have a look :)

For the full BBC article, that's online here.