THE workers upon whom Honda has just dropped a redundancy bombshell will be feeling both shocked and bewildered.

They are not the only ones, as just about everybody who hears the grim tidings will feel the same.

We had been led to believe that the European market upon which the plant depends was recovering from the global economic disaster which struck at the end of the last decade.

Sadly, it seems that for the people in charge of the Japanese car giant the recovery simply isn’t happening fast enough to sustain current staffing levels.

Perplexingly, the latest developments at Honda come not long after BMW announced current and forthcoming vacancies at its plants in both Swindon and Oxford, in order to cope with demand for the latest incarnation of the Mini.

What we said then and repeat now is that this is proof, as if proof were still needed after all these years, of the sheer quality and professionalism of the Swindon workforce.

We hope most of the redundancies at Honda turn out to be voluntary, and that much of the resultant slack in the jobs market will be taken up by BMW.

The affected Honda workers can at least take heart from the fact that other companies, of which BMW is only one, are currently optimistic about the future, and that people with skills such as theirs will always be in demand.

It is only to be hoped that when things pick up at Honda and more staff must be recruited, enough people with suitable abilities can be found.