'Shrinking' Violet In Gordon's Rosy Garden

Government spin on the end of the slump has been slapped around the chops with a wet Wall Street weekly, as financial wire-service Bloomberg spells out the horrific state of the economy for all the world to see. For the first time in half a century UK output shrank by a scary 2.4%, according to official figures. Everything in Gordon's garden may be coming up roses but in the real world it stinks.

Today's grim figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) paints an horrific picture of Gordon's garden. The decline in output was more severe than earlier estimates of a 1.9% fall and worse than the Brown sauce from the spinning ship, with construction and manufacturing taking the big hit.

As Bloomberg points out, the quarterly drop was the biggest since the year Michael Jackson was born.

And the biggest since Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan rallied the Party to the call: “most of our people have never had it so good.”

And that was at a time when the post-war economy was in and out of recession, ending in a 2.6 percent slump in the second quarter of 1958.

Translated into English and the real world that means more jobs are on the line. Another nail in the coffin of crap and more bad news for consumers ahead. With no real cash in the kitty there's not a cat in hell's chance of a real kick-start. The country's triple-A credit rating looks decidedly dodgy.

There are choices out there for a rocky road of recovery. Those tough choices should be made now. The country cannot afford to wait around in New Labour la-la land until after an election. The public can take a Tory line, a LibDem line or the government's fishy line.

Today's stark figures come hard on the heels of the other grim warning from leading economic think tank, OECD, that the country is in a miserable mess. With the biggest budget deficit in the world, a severe recession to come and dire times ahead, the UK is predicted to sink further into the red than any other major developed country next year.

And still in the land of grim, Bank of England boss, Mervyn King, called for tough action to tackle the "truly extraordinary" deficit. Firing off a broadside, useless Darling was urged to get a grip on his huge deficit and the debt-ridden borrowing binge.

All in stark contrast to bouncy Brown and deluded Darling’s heady optimism. Only last year the Laurel and Hardy pair told the public the economy would be on its uppers by this July. But that was a political recovery not a real one. Trying to hide the fine mess they'd got the country into, a gullible public was expected to fall for it hook, line and stinker.

Buried in the report is the revelation that the economic recession depression began much earlier.

The ONS now says the recession began during the second quarter of 2008 rather than during July to September. So the recession has been running for a whole year.

So why did we have to wait until January before it was officially confirmed? Why did the government and Brown's BBC string the public along for so long with a cute little downturn? Why was it only at the stroke of midnight the beloved 'downturn' turned into a pumpkin and the nightmare of recession depression?

Sprinkle financial fairy dust and ministers didn't have to get off their backsides and do something about it. They could play politics, dupe the public, burying their heads in the sand, live in cloud cuckoo land, pretend it hasn't happened and pray it will blow away.

A bit of planning not petty politics wouldn't have gone amiss. The patient is poorly, cry some politicians and dry-eyed economists. But it's worse than that, he's dead Jim.

A dose of mother's ruin is all that's on offer. Borrow billions and leave a mountain of debt.

Will this discredited government of lies and deceit ever wake up and realise it's not just the ONS, the OECD, the governor of the Bank of England, Saint Vince, uncle Tom Cobley and all who can see see through the smoke and mirrors accounting and the heady mix of lies, deceit and dishonesty over the economy?

Probably not, so it's back to the bad old ways trying to fool some of the people some of the time until bunkered Brown has the guts to call an election.