One key one, which I will give them a pinch of credit for, is the government guarantee to home loan providers for first time buyers of up to 15%, effectively opening the vaults and doling out loads more cash - albeit not having to spend actual cash just yet but effectively tying it up - to start the housing market rolling again.

On the downside its not a unique concept to the coalition, has been done in the past to similar success, they were asked time and again to consider this tactic but refused, and basically means they have spent their way out of a building trades disaster - so successful was it initially that they've now had to apply the brakes - the first quarter of next year will be very interesting.

[urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23079082[/url

I loved this news story when it was first released and I love it again upon re-reading, its got all the hallmarks of the re-writing of the history books by the victors.

Fortunately enough people swallow the newsfeeds without question to allow it to pass into the history books unhindered.

Give it a few more years and it will all be the Jews fault again.

I don't have a personal recession.

Do you?



The double dip was "revised away", as the story that Jerry linked to illustrates.

The economy was in growth in 2010. The policies of the incoming government put paid to that and sent the country back into recession.

As we've also seen and discussed here, the issue of underemployment is one of the most crucial in terms of asking whether the recovery is really that great – or certainly whether it's having any benefits for most people.

Not only did they re-write the stats FIFTEEN months later (it normally only takes six months for the ONS to get its revised figures together) but at the same time they also went back FIVE YEARS to re-write the stats for 2008 to make that recession look worse - that has to be unprecedented surely ?

Unprecedented in the action of revisiting those statistics over that time period (who ordered this to happen ?) but also unprecedented in assuming that the public are dumb enough to nod wisely and swallow the rhetoric that "None of this is our fault".

On a slightly different note – but Jerry has raised the issue of undermployment/casualisation anyway – [url=http://www.unison.org.uk/news/unison-launches-fight-against-scrooge-employerthe Scrooge employer that refuses to pay the national minimum wage, charges his staff 17,000% APR for loans on petrol to get between jobs, 'rents' them company cars at £128 a month because they're not paid enough to buy one and then takes hundreds of pounds from their wages if they're in a road accident where they're not to blame.[/url

Having run my own business I'm always prepared to consider the business perspective in issues like this - but frankly if half of what Unison have found is true then the owner of this business does not deserve employees and the contracting authorities should be having a stern word with him for if strike action is called it will affect thousands of elderly and infirm across their regions for what is very clearly a bad employer - there's no excuse.

A definition invented by trustworthiness's Richard Nixon, altered from the original and more relevant meaning of one quarter of negative growth in order that he could tell the public that the US was not in recession when it was.

I must admit to not having read the NMW legislation from cover to cover, but surely if that bit's true, he can be prosecuted?

AGAIN because you seem have difficulty with this question or (and this is harsh but looks as if it is true) your intellectual capacity cannot comprehend such a simple, straight forward question.

=#FF0000[size=200WHICH ECONOMY????[/size

I even coloured it in for you to help

No one is forced to work here, he would have to change his attitude and conditions if he couldn't find anyone to do the work. Presumably everyone knew what the terms were when they joined?

In "The Real World", people don't have oodles and oodles of lovely choices for jobs.

If they leave a job tomorrow, there are not hundreds of jobs available. I know that, in fantasy la la land, some people like to pretend that there are just millions vacancies out there, all ready to be filled, but this is not the reality. That is why there are more people unemployed than there are vacancies.

And given privatisation of services, it is entirely possible that pay, terms and conditions have been changed since people were employed to do the job – there are plenty of workplaces where this has happened more than once as the workers have been passed between companies like a parcel.

That's "The Real World" for you.

I know that the journalist posting this story was so shocked that they double checked – and then the editor and the head of comms did further checks, simply because it is so shocking.

The government has said that not paying people for travel time (thus reducing their pay to below the national minimum wage) is 'not on' and companies shouldn't do it, but they have yet to legislate to close a loophole that, when the legislation was initially enacted, nobody foresaw.

In the case of this branch, I also know that the union is only now in a position to start acting because recruitment (on the basis of the employer's behaviour) has given it good density.