The 850 workers who have lost their jobs at BMW in Oxford, like hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed across the country, want action, not sympathetic words, from politicians.

Yesterday, after the news broke that hundreds of agency staff had been made redundant from the Cowley car plant, a succession of politicians, local and national, were quick to point out that “everything would be done” to help those who lost their jobs.

It sounds great, but what is actually being done?

Oxfordshire County Council, the South East England Development Agency and other organisations have bleated on in their own inimitable jargon about ‘working with partners’ to mitigate the effects of the tightening recession.

It is all very well singing the praises of Oxfordshire’s first job club, which opened in Banbury recently, but we need one in Oxford. And fast.

The truth remains that too many organisations were too slow to react to the inevitable.

With most other UK car manufacturers having laid-off staff, council leaders in Oxford should have seen this coming.

We don’t pretend the answer to the problems of widespread job cuts lies at the Town Hall, but it is indicative of the nature of local politics that things are hastily being put in place now, when they should have been thought about before.

The unemployed need to know real advice and guidance is out there, not that politicians are “doing all they can” without backing up words with action.