I’m a simple man but I still can’t see why there is all the doom and gloom about the future of the UK economy. Isn’t the deficit we see slightly artificial?

Yes there’s been a depression (yes past tense), yes we eventually spent billions buying shares in banks to stop a major economic disaster and along the way avoided millions of minor disasters for individual savers and investors (you and me). There has been a lot of individual pain for many and it isn’t all over yet, but come on get real folks, it’s time to wake up and smell the flowers.

Our “investments” in various banks are listed as spending. When is someone going to start to talk more clearly about the fact that these investments will grow as bank shares recover and they will pay back everything they borrowed! There will be share dividends coming in to the exchequer and this will help too.

The longer-term view is not so bleak so cheer up people and pundits, it’s nearly Christmas.

So what is holding us back? We are fighting a war on terror and shouldn’t pretend that a peacetime economy and peacetime taxation is really going to pay that bill. Don’t forget that the first Income Tax 10% arrived in WW1 and never went away. Does anybody really know what the real economic costs of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and on the Home Front? I’m not arguing for or against them here, but we should all recognise that wars are expensive and have to be paid for eventually, which is why depressions follow wars. So when people are talking about the economy let’s not just hear about 1.5% here and 2.5% there, let’s hear about true total costs in each area and what we need to pay to balance the books. All this sniping and politicking about budgets and who wins and loses is boring me silly!