Trade Union leaders were pelted with fruit today when they gave 850 workers the news they were out of a job within the next hour with no severance pay.

One of the workers who was interviewed said "I've been driving my car like a maniac, I've never felt like this in my life, this isn't me, I'm off to the doctors to get signed off sick" There was a sense of madness in his retort, desperation, right on dare I say it the brink.

I know that feeling oh so well. After my business collapsed in the early nineties I got the opportunity to work with mate broking second hand dealing rooms etc. from a little basement in Throgmorton Street just by the LSE. I will never forget the first morning back in a rather depressed city.

I disembarked the train at London Bridge Station, a cloudless spring sky, I walked shoulder to shoulder with fellow commuter along the rather dingy station exit towards London Bridge. I turned right to be greeted by the Thames and the square mile just a quick walk away across the span, always an impressive sight.

A man I had been following in sheep like commuter autopilot fashion suddenly stood up on the side of the bridge and jumped. To be honest I didn't pay much attention, there were always engineering works going on under the bridge and I presumed he was a surveyor on engineer jumping on to some out of eyesight scaffold board.

No, this was one of the many during those years who just couldn't take it any longer. As I looked over the side he was lifting his arms in the air so he could go under more easily in the filthy Thames. His briefcase had come open and with its contents was following him in the current towards HMS Belfast. One of the items was a carrier bag that looked like wrapped sandwiches, perhaps his lunch, perhaps his wife made them for him last night, my mind rambled in panic and sadness.

The Thames current can be fierce and I think it was pulling him down river and stopping him from sinking which gave him time to change his mind. He then started to swim for his life but by this time the tide had pulled him close to the Belfast and he disappeared under its hull.

I only worked in London for another two months as the atmosphere was tinged with the same desperation as the man who jumped off the bridge.

My fear is, as the current financial crisis deepens so will mental health and the UK's Thatcherite care in the community is only just beginning to cope and get on top of the last recessions output. People are already starting to dysfunction with anxiety and fear, I've seen it and been part of it all before. I isolated rather than asked for help through pride and I'm sure I would have had a better landing if I'd have been brave enough to be honest with my friends and family, humility is a gift.

Think it's time to pull together and help out wherever possible, I wonder if the governments realise they could be spawning a war time spirit bringing people together. The enemy? Well you work it out for yourself.