I agree with Alistair Darling's view expressed in last week's Guardian interview that the UK economy will soon be in the most serious position for some sixty years. Since that interview, the OECD has announced that the last two quarters of 2008 will see the UK in recession.

The economic outlook is a toxic mixture of the following:

The UK banks cannot raise enough capital and credit to continue with existing lending. They will be forced to reduce lending to business and personal customers and therefore will call in more and more loans, overdrafts, credit card balances and will have to refuse to extend many mortgages.

Customers will lack the means to repay the capital outstanding and/or service the debt and will default. The banks will then make further losses and have to reduce their lending, and then a vicious circle chips in on the basis that each £1 of lost capital requires circa £10 reduction in lending.

The appalling results of the above events are that tax revenues and employment are falling sharply, while government spending is increasing to cover higher social benefits.

At the same time, higher prices for food and energy are damaging household finances and living standards, and are bringing higher inflation.

The obvious policy response would be for the Bank of England to cut interest rates sharply, but they are already pretty low and inflation is over target.

The response by the market will be to lower the value of sterling (this causes higher inflation, although exports will get a boost) and for business to lay off workers as demand in the UK will reduce in the recession.

In the 10 years to 2007, Gordon Brown as Chancellor promised us that he had achieved an end to boom and bust.

In fact Labour were presiding over a boom of historic proportions, fuelled by a huge expansion of credit and cheap world prices.

Both of these dangerous illusory props are gone, and both Government and consumer are now faced with some impossible bills to pay.

The is a real possibility that the British state is staring bankruptcy in the face and will have to default on a number of its obligations (servicing the civil service pension commitments, liabilities under PFI deals and so on).

The British state is already seen by many English as morally bankrupt. It has been cruel and vicious in its trashing of England, her democracy and her great people.

Now the incompetence and greed of the British political elites have led our once vibrant economy to recession and the British state to near financial bankruptcy.

So what is to be done?

It is time for the English to take power into their own hands, to revive a sovereign English Parliament and to make England once more an independent nation state.

The new English government will have much work to do, but at least we know that it will be English, that it will be honest and will be more competent than the present corrupt British elites who have made Britain morally and financially bankrupt.
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The banks can not call in masses of debt because The Office of Fair Trading is fighting them in the High court over whether bank charges are fair or not. The Judges decision is not expected for many months and until then they can not reclaim debts.
This recession is time to consider one of the most necessary political moves: nationalising the banks.
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Although what has been said is true, it seems to me an even worse aspect of these problems is that Britain cannot pay its way in the world. The trade deficit is widening [revised to £4.4bn in June] and we are a nation that currently provides enough food for about 17m of our 60m inhabitants. How long will the rest of the world to let us buy the remainder on tick, without much prospect of repaying what we owe.

England is much worse placed in this regard with a population of 976/sq.m compared to Scotland 168/sq.m and Wales 361/sq.m and therefore much less able to feed its people. For comparison purposes China has 363/sq.m.
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This country will always have boom and bust to some degree, the trick is to keep the peaks and troughs as small as possible. The economy was good when the world economy was good. Now the economy is bad it is fair to say that conditions outside of the UK have exacerbated issues.

In bad economic times we need decisive and strong leadership to give us confidence, this is sorely lacking.

I think that the short term thinking of governments is the greatest danger we face. All modern UK governments have taken decisions which are not based on benefit to the nation, but are based on being re-elected. The most notable exception to this was when Gordon Brown gave control of Interest rates to the Bank of England - a master stroke (he should have quit when he was ahead!)

Any decent country should try to achieve, as far as is practicable, the following for long term stability:

a) Control of its own energy supply. (We have vast coal reserves and yet we import gas from Russia. Is it the cheap alternative that we were once told it was? Ideally we could tap into our vast wind and wave power potential)
b) Maintaining a manufacturing base for essential heavy industry such as shipbuilding, steelworks etc.
c) A populous which shares the same values, culture and traditions. (instead of importing votes, truly a scandal)
d) Affordable and decent housing for all.
e) Control of its food supply, with as much home produce as possible.

No government should be able to deviate from these aims for short term gains.
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Yes - I agree. The only way that I can see that such controls could be introduced is if the HofL's [with a better appointments procedure] had the power to initiate a referendum when the government of the day insisted on pressing on with measures, for short-term gain, against the long-term interests of the country.
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In relation to Constantines thread topic for Debate there are very tough times ahead in the whole of the UK sadly people losing there jobs and my heart goes out to all of them and there families.Then Constantine waffles on about what is to be done and the one Issue FEP policy comes up all your problems will be solved folks break and smash the union.(UK) English Independence can only save us all.No commentators nobody in the press or anybody else mentions English Independence. which is the answer to getting us out of the tough times ahead. Mr constantine because we are going to go into a real hard time for all of us(UK).Your second part of your long winded thread statement was all meaningless.English Indepedence isnt on the radar Mr constantine get over it.The people in all regions of the united kingdom are in for trying times and will pull together to get over those trying times nobody is listeniing to you or your daft statement.
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Well in terms of the energy crisis, we could have built a whole load of nuclear power stations to supply a massive proportion of our energy. The cost of this would be equiv. to just two years of our EU expenses.
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In relation to Constantines thread topic for debate.What is to be done.He Constantines answers himself in the second part then he constatine thinks everybody else will follow him.But the problem is when he constantine looks behind theres nobody either there or listening to him.
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Originally Posted by Danny:
In relation to Constantines thread topic for debate.What is to be done.He Constantines answers himself in the second part then he constatine thinks everybody else will follow him.But the problem is when he constantine looks behind theres nobody either there or listening to him.

For god's sake apply that to yourself before we all go mad with your constant spamming and trolling. :-)
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Originally Posted by Millennium3:
Although what has been said is true, it seems to me an even worse aspect of these problems is that Britain cannot pay its way in the world. The trade deficit is widening [revised to £4.4bn in June] and we are a nation that currently provides enough food for about 17m of our 60m inhabitants. How long will the rest of the world to let us buy the remainder on tick, without much prospect of repaying what we owe.

England is much worse placed in this regard with a population of 976/sq.m compared to Scotland 168/sq.m and Wales 361/sq.m and therefore much less able to feed its people. For comparison purposes China has 363/sq.m.

Just to return to this post. UK population is 637/sq.m. Climate change [whatever its cause] is likely to reduce crop yield as plants have to adapt to new conditions, world population is increasing, also the standard of living in some of the least developed nations is, thankfully, improving. All of these factors increase the demand for a decreasing supply of food - it is why food prices are rising [peak food]. From an English prospective, to break up the UK and to lose the least populated area from where surplus food could be produced, would seriously worsen a worsening fundamental problem.
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