“…in the past six years, I have risen several hours earlier than I used to in my innocent bachelor days and, in consequence, I now go to bed at the hour I used to start going out….”

Michael Gove

So, Gordon Brown says that the British economy will be growing again by the turn of the year, according to his podcast yesterday.  Taking into account that the next quarter will include the Christmas trading period and the figures for the most recent quarter showed a slowing contraction of the British economy, I suppose he might be proved right, technically.  In any event, one “good” quarter would not make a recovery, especially if it is followed by indifferent figures, let alone figures showing further albeit small, contractions of the economy. A weak recovery is little better than no recovery at all, except for the purpose of temporarily boosting moral, unless prolonged.  In fact, the prospects for real sustainable growth in 2010 are not good.  A stall of “the recovery” in the first quarter of 2010 is more likely than not, notwithstanding the Labour Government’s attempts to engineer a phoney uplift in the economy during the months preceding the next General Election.

This recession is unfortunately, another struggle that will not “be over by Christmas”.