Bailout for ex-employees at Rover?

Something that has really wound me up, and I know it sounds kinda harsh - so please don't hate me for it. Why is it that a standard redundancy situation turned into a political spin crisis?
I'm talking, of course, about the recent MG Rover group trip-and-fall. Having followed the news reporting, I found it unbelievable that the spin placed on the situation by the Media and the Politicians turned it into 'saving jobs'. Why?
If a company has to do it, then they have to do it. There may be an enquiry about the MG Rover group's directors and accountants for letting the company trade whilst possibly insolvent. I know it's harsh but by the sounds of it the 500 staff who's jobs were on the line probably had a decent chance of being re-hired elsewhere - apparently they are highly trained in engineering-style manufacturing lines.
Anyway, my biggest problem was why did the government promote public money to pay for the wages for a week (and I'm sure this wasn't the only thing they did)? I'm sorry - but why should 500 staff of a company be supported like that. Is it to avoid the fact that 500 start claiming for DSS benefits? Really? I would suggest that the cost of providing benefits might actually be less than their salaries - but since we don't know how much that came to exactly, we'll never know.
Plenty of people are made redundent but I don't see the government running to help them every day. Actually - Littlewoods has just made this annoucement and over 3,000 staff will be made redundent across the UK - go on, Mr. Governement... go spend more public money.
Remember the Dot Com crash - how many people went redundent during that. Then there's the Miner's strike... anyway. I'll stop now. There are plenty of bad situations... but when it happens around the General Election people start spinning it.
Also, not that I'm a business analyst, but since it's the turn of the financial year (April 5th) - isn't there more companies that make dramatic decisions (like Littlewoods, for example) around this time? Perhaps the Election should be held in Autumn instead to avoid this?