RECESSION...

The UK economic news goes from bad to worse.

Recession looms in the UK in the next six to nine months as firms face "a difficult and risky climate", the British Chambers of Commerce warns.  UK growth will be slightly negative or zero in the next two or three quarters, but a major recession is unlikely, the BCC says in its latest forecast.  But prospects will be worse if interest rates are not cut soon, it adds. The BCC predicts UK unemployment will rise by between 250,000 and 300,000 in the next 18 months to two years. That could take the jobless total to more than two million for the first time since Labour came to power in 1997.

This raises so many questions. Given that we are told we needed virtually unrestricted immigration to get labour into the UK to "do the work that Brits just won't do" - now that there are even less of these jobs, will we start deporting those no longer required to do the non-jobs Brits don't need to do? Or is this going to lead to a surge in welfare demand? Also, the Labour administration has carefully recalibrated the measure of what constitutes unemployment by moving up to a million over onto the welfare rolls. So is it not true to say that IF the BCC is correct then we are going to have record unemployment? This all points to a doomsday scenario for Gordon Brown - the man who claimed he had ended boom and bust.

Comments

[mahons]

I always wonder about politicians ability to effect the economy (clearly they can effect it is a negative way).