BY the time readers scan through this column, we will be back in lockdown.

Inevitably, there are arguments about who is right when it comes to timing.

Labour’s leader Kier Starmer, whilst navigating his way through his own anti-Semitism nightmares, is saying the government should have listened to him and had a two-week lockdown a months ago.

Meanwhile businesses and business leaders are saying that another lockdown will do yet more irreparable damage to the economy.

Both have a point. In trying to avoid the economic damage, the government has opted for the one-month lockdown, starting after midnight this Thursday.

The numbers I have seen make this very compelling indeed. In this trajectory, we run out of NHS beds across the whole country on December 17.

To do nothing would be to put our whole country in medical jeopardy. But to do something is to put businesses and livelihoods at risk. Again.

Last week, I launched a website with Gavin Miller from the regional Community Union. Gavin and I have put on jobs fairs together in the past, but with the restrictions on events in place even before the lockdown, we wanted to respond to the rising unemployment here in Wyre Forest.

WyreForestJobs.info is a website that will help signpost those looking for jobs and training to the right place. It doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but it hopes to be a starting point.

This is an incredibly frightening time for many people, losing jobs they have held for decades, or finding it impossible to get started on life’s career ladder. Our website is there to help.

But for local businesses facing their own, commercial, challenges, the Kidderminster Shuttle is relaunching its campaign to help local businesses. The Love Local Business campaign is here to try to drive local demand to local providers.

I think it is a brilliant idea. Our whole community is made up of all sorts of people and organisations, and many of them are businesses.

If we don’t support our local businesses, we lose them, with the resultant decline of our wider commercial environment.

You will need to trade with them via the internet, but it is worth doing.

Help our local businesses survive and they will grow. When they grow, they will employ more people. And with more people in work, our whole local economy will get through this quicker, and thrive again when we get back to normal.