EVERY week, it seems, there is another story emanating from the Nissan plant in Sunderland about worries for the future.

This week's version is that even if Sunderland does win the new Micra, much of its components will come from the euro-zone.

This is bad news for the North-East because it is estimated that for every person directly employed by Nissan there are another four employed supplying Nissan. That means 20,000 jobs are directly at risk, which shows just how important the Japanese firm's inward investment into the region has been over the last two decades.

There are two schools of thought about why Nissan is constantly allowing potential job loss stories to reach the media.

The first is that the company is genuinely disadvantaged by Britain being outside the euro. The pound is very strong against the euro and this obviously presents great economic difficulties to a company that sells 75 per cent of its cars in the euro-zone.

The constant stories are acting as a perpetual reminder to the Government that one of the most disappointing aspects of its performance has been its failure to give a lead on the euro. It appears that its leading personalities prefer to debate with each other in the pages of the tabloids about who said what at a dinner party four years ago, and so avoid the debate with the country about whether losing some of our financial independence is worth saving 20,000 jobs in the North-East.

The second school of thought about Nissan is that it is merely trying it on. Every scare story is another encouragement to the Government to give Nissan the £40m of aid it wants. This, of course, is blackmail and if hauliers and farmers cannot be allowed to bully the democratically-elected government, then neither can multi-national companies.

Both schools of thought probably contain an element of truth.

However, Nissan's stories are a wake-up call to both the Government and our regional and local development agencies. They are an early warning of the potential fall-out from Nissan's decision on the Micra - a decision which is due in December.

Disappointingly, the Government has not been prepared to join the euro debate, and it has not been successful in weakening the strength of the pound. It is to be hoped, then, that our local authorities are pulling together to persuade Nissan to stay while at the same time working out how the region will cope when or if thousands more manufacturing jobs are lost.

Because of the constant drip, drip of stories, no one can say that they haven't been warned.