Ah, so it's not being useless, clueless and incompetent. It's all the fault of the Eurozone, according to the Treasury.

Is it too much to expect the entire Coalition to resign now? Thought so.

They're not the jumping sort. I do however expect them to get not so much 'pushed' as 'propelled forward at something barely short of supersonic speed' at the next general election. The worry is how much damage they'll have done before that rolls around.

PMQ's today should be fun mind.. no,wait, Ed MIlliband. Oh God.

Jon

It probably is (since most of our exports go there, so if they're not buying, there's no point making anything). However, it's also our own fault for putting too many eggs in the Eurozone basket and us not buying stuff made in this country (or actually making stuff in the first place). Look how well LR is doing - 1000 new jobs (which attracted 35000 applicants) because the Evoque is selling so well, particularly in China.

Let's face it - until we start making stuff here that people actually want to buy, we'll always be at the mercy of overseas markets, and most of them have the advantage of more home-grown industries than us and a labour force that takes more pride in what it makes (you only have to look at how well the Japanese car factories in this country are doing).

Maybe we should be persuading Apple to buy UK plc and get us making their shiny stuff here instead of China.

Yes, my six year old needs a job!

and at least a 6 yr old is happy to work for £5 / day

and be replaced by who ?

The other mob who actually put us in this mess to start with

That is the flaw in my plan.

Incidentally, I keep remembering reading or hearing that the economy was beginning to pick up around the time of the election in 2010. Right now - because it's late and I can't actually be bothered to search for it - I can't support that claim. So, while it may be true the Labour government led us into the mire, in collusion with the world's top banks, I understand their policies to try and sort it out were perhaps beginning to bear fruit when we all went and voted them out of office as punishment...

Anyone got any practical suggestions on how they could have avoided it?

It would be interesting to hear their excuses, not being able to blame the previous government for the financial mess; or would they turn on their own and demonise Blair and Brown even further?

Labour's problem is they aren't a credible alternative to the woeful coalition parties. Can you see Milliband as Prime Minister? The next election could be a bumper harvest for the crazies and extremist parties.

It's clear that the current measures are not helping the economy, and that the Posh Boys are without anything remotely resembling a workable solution, but there's no way they are going to turn from their path

And this is the huge problem with an office that is re-elected every few years. The public only permit them to make short term plans. Short term plans do not build for long term success.

Before we can have a government that can govern effectively, we need to change the public that would vote them out. Since we've run out of far-flung continents to ship people off to, I think we need to start building great big Arks to send off into space. Free passes for all Daily Mail readers...

I'll go out on a limb and say it doesn't matter who's in power - the present situation was unavoidable. We'd still be in recession if Labour, the Greens, UKIP or whoever was in power.

Yeah, not cut public spending so quickly and drastically so as to destroy confidence and spook the markets. We're sacking public sector workers faster than private jobs are appearing with no tangible effect on the deficit - all the cuts in the world won't save you if they undermine the economy.

By your own logic, if you were (for the sake of argument) a freelance graphic designer whose business opportunities were reduced by a recession amongst your customers (not of your making), you would only suffer from reduced income if you were a similarly incompetent buffoon.

Our imaginary designer would no doubt object on the grounds that it takes time to crack new markets which are more robust. Or even that such markets are not readily available for his or her product. But British business is surely in the same predicament.

We manufacture a fair amount (world's 5th biggest manufacturer last I knew, I guess we've probably lost a place or two in the last few years though), but we don't have a large supply of workers who are willing to work for far below poverty wages putting together plastic tat for export far and wide (the secret of what we shall call China's 'success'). We have spent over a century losing our competitiveness in machine tools and heavy engineering to the rest of Northern Europe, America, Japan, Italy South Korea and latterly China and India. It would be facile to blame the present chancellor for the fact that his counterparts in the 1860s were outsmarted by their German equivalents. So our manufactures are mostly in the mid range, and thus not suitable for export over great distances, as their main cost advantage lies in their proximity to their markets. Which means Europe. So if they are in recession then there will be no manufacturing led recovery here.