Well that's what's happening, and its not really a stupid idea as devaluing the currency is a good move in this environment. If Spain, Italy, Greece and Ireland had had that option they wouldn't be in quite the same mess they were/are in now.

Have you seen the price of gold/oil/productive land in sterling recently?

I would describe it as one. Some put a strict definition on the term 'depression', some use it to describe the overall picture over several years. I think the description fits even if the definition doesn't.

Lawrie, you're looking a bit out of your depth here lad. I'd step away now.

It's called "quantitative easing" and the mechanism involves using printed money to buy government bonds. It's been going on for a while, no secret.

Depends on your interpretation of going concern - would the UK have greater assets than liabilities if all the assets were valued? of course it has - if it hadn't no one would buy its bonds. Far from insolvent, heavily in debt yes insolvent no where near.

Ther's plenty of it if you want to look, and it isn't limited to this government. The answer you get to whether the economy is growing or shrinking depends on the metric or group of metrics you use as indicators of growth. Most governments will, strangely enough, choose ones that provide the news they want to provide.

A conservative estimate of the national debt is £5 trillion. I'd suggest this debt is unpayable as it is equivalent to over 3 years' GDP. I can't see a time when the whole of the UK would or could elect to work for nothing for that long. The UK private sector is in no position to help given the unprecedented, horrendous levels of corporate and personal debt.

We don't know if anybody would buy our bonds because the biggest buyer of UK bonds is .... the UK treasury. The snake is eating its own tail.

I agree it is unlikely the UK will go bankrupt. But the only remaining option is inflating away the debt which will bankrupt a lot of its citizens instead.

Spot on

But the debt doesn't have to be paid back at all at once and much of it is secured on assets.

There were still plenty of free tickets as all children playing at half time and the cheerleading club all get free tickets,
Its all so they bring a paying parent / parents too or crowd would be lower.

Quite correct,if anybody started a printing press at home printing money you would be jailed. This because it increases inflation, any government highly in debt secretly ls happy with a reasonable amount of inflation as it inflates away some of the debt.
For the last few months all targets for inflation set by the government have not being met. The downside of this tactic is the erosion and values of people's savings. The major weapon to fight inflation is to increase interest rates ,to do that would increase people's mortgages . This will not happen hence we are just postponing real debt repayment for another generation .

The timing and manner of repayment is determined by creditors. Greece, Ireland and Cyprus all provide examples of how uncomfortable this process can be.

OMG - when did SouthStander get so high-brow?

What started out as a point regarding slipping SL attendances has turned into a lesson in social economics.

Gotta love this site.