One guy said to me yesterday, ‘I never went 20 minutes without a customer before, now it’s become a pattern. A year ago the shop never empty for more than a minute or so’. His biggest value item is about a tenner.

Financial services can always make a profit, even in a bust. Derivatives and bonds are not the stuff of the average man on the street. The recession is worse than ever, and I will not really believe that we are out of it until I start to see people on the streets with money to spend on non-essentials.

I believe that may be at least a year from now, but most likely longer.

“Growth will come – I’m confident about that”
- Alistair Darling, demonstrating his stunning economic credentials once again while commenting on the disastrous GDP figures released today that showed the UK is in its longest recession since the 1950s adjusting his telescope to better asses the length of the UK’s burgeoning dole queues

Fixed it for ya.

They talk out of it, have policy outcomes that smell like one and for all intensive purposes have the same output, having fed lots of good stuff in from the other end.