Woe, Woe and Thrice Woe

According to statistics released yesterday the UK is now officially out of the recession. Our economy grew by 0.1% in the last quarter, and given that the error could be as much as 0.5% either way, I’d say the pundits are being as premature as a 6 month baby.

How come it takes two quarters of shrinkage (I hate the term negative growth) to be classified as being in recession and only one of growth for the economy to be said to be out of a recession? It's a bit like saying two steps back and one forward results in an overall forward movement.

I dare say that, like me, the vast majority of you reading this have been totally unaffected by the recession. It was a non-event. You may have cut back on your spending as a knee-jerk reaction, but you probably didn’t really need to – thereby contributing to the depth of said recession and retail businesses going bust.

If you have a mortgage then you’ve benefitted from the lowest interest rates since the Jews forbade usury; if you have savings then you most certainly haven’t benefited - but at least you’re not in deep debt by virtue of having a nest egg.

If you took advantage of the car scrappage scheme then you probably had to borrow money to buy your new car – and contributed to the nation getting even deeper into debt, a key contributor to this problem in the first place.

Some, if not most of you, had to forgo your annual inflationary pay rise last year – but seeing as inflation was negative you lost nothing and may have in fact gained slightly.

A very small percentage of you may have lost your jobs, and it is those people who will have been affected – and deeply.

Have your taxes gone up? Have interest rates gone up horrendously? The number of unemployed is actually smaller than during the last round of mass unemployment. All in all it hasn’t been too bad – yet.

Listen to the comments from the hoi polloi in the press and the BBC news website and you’d think the recession – which was world-wide phenomenon – was solely due to Gordon Brown’s policies. He may be an important and influential man, but even his policies cannot alone cause US banks to fail, and it was in the US that the house of cards began to cascade due to the sub-prime mortgage fiasco.

Some people are totally ignorant of fact and allowing them to vote is like giving a stick of dynamite to a baby. Ask them precisely how Gordon Brown’s policies caused the recession and they’d be stumped, as they’re merely trotting out unfounded pub dogma and haven’t really thought about what they would (or could) have done differently without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

Yes, tighter regulation of the banks would have been a good idea, but ask yourself who deregulated everything in sight initially? It certainly wasn’t Labour. Also, when things are going well and the economy is booming it is a tad illogical to put the brakes on with no good reason – and the reasons to do that don’t become apparent till the wheels fall off due to circumstances beyond your control.

If the UK has suffered more than our European counterparts it’s because we courted the money men and attracted them to London. When we did so, there were no Cassandra-like cries from anyone that this was a particularly bad idea on par with invading the Sudetenland or giving women the vote.

The Equalities Commission has reached the devastating conclusion that the gap between poor and rich is wider than ever. It doesn’t take an A* maths GCSE student to work out that if everyone gets percentage pay rises then the gap is bound to widen with time. Actually, an A* maths GCSE student probably wouldn’t realise that as I don't think percentages are covered till university these days.

I wish someone could explain to me what's intrinsically bad about having rich people. Providing their money is circulating through the economy and creating jobs, then what's the problem? What's important is that the poor are able to sustain themselves, not how much the rich earn. Concerning yourself with what the rich earn is called envy. Anyway, doesn't the bible say that the poor are blessed in some way - along with the cheesemakers?