"Growth" is going to be exceedingly difficult to achieve in our high cost economy at a time of global economic uncertainty and a desperate Eurozone (which needs breaking up asap for all our sakes. Hopefully the French socialist will get elected and the Germans pull out of the ridiculous project).

So, we're left with increasing taxes / cutting spending. Increasing taxes dampens economic activity so, sadly, we're left with cutting public spending much more dramatically, deregulation of the labour market and policy aimed at devaluing the pound.

How is being able to force the proles to work longer, for less money, at greater risks to their health and safety, going to do anything other than create wealth for those exploit their labour? And where do you think that wealth will be spent, if not on villas in tax havens and expensive tax avoidance schemes?

Henry Ford was smart enough to figure out that if he made the Model T affordable enough, and paid his workers a good enough wage, they would be able to buy his products thereby keeping his business going. Economic stimulation comes from putting spending money in the pockets of the majority of society, not in the bank accounts of the few.

Or balancing taxes, by, for example, reducing VAT/fuel duty, and reintroducing the 50% tax rate to anyone employed in an investment bank (betting shop) earning (or rather being paid - earning implies the work has a value) more than £100000 a year.

So, you want job specific taxes?

What about sportsmen for example? Doctors? Public servants (sic)?

If you have a thing about investment bankers then an article in The Guardian a few years back gave a perfect solution. As they like to think they are special, they should be treated like pole dancers. In other words, they should bid each year to work in an investment bank. The top bidders get the jobs and keep a percentage of the profits they generate. If they have a bad year the bank at least has their bid money. It would be interesting to see how many really believe they are good enough to bid a couple of million quid for the chance to work with the banks / its customers money for a year.

I guess then, by your reckoning, that neither of the US and Germany have such a high cost economy?
They have recovered back to a point where they have slightly higher GDP than they had in Q1 2008 ... but the UK still wallows at -4.5% (i.e. minus 4.5%) over the same period.

Pish! What are you doing posting facts, Mr B?

Next you'll want to remind people that the US engaged in a programme of stimulus.

The US and Germany are different beasts. The US is racking up ridiculous levels of debt and the jury is to whether their approach orf the UKs will prove better in the longer-term. Germany makes alot of things people want and export them. That's why I want the pound devalued further so we can stimulate exports (and curtail import of finished goods). Germany does though have its own problems by virtue of the Eurozone and its also weak banks. At some point those chickens may come home to roost for them and they will need to act. That should put a brake on their economy.

Britain is a baset case though. When Gordon Brown announced we were better placed than most when the 2008 crisis broke, I recall arguing on here and elsewhere that we were actually one of the worst placed and we'd take 10 years to get over it. I see nothing to change my mind.

I'd hand in my RLFans log-in details if you did.

We had lower national debt than Germany (and other countries drawn into the crisis) at the time.

This is a fact.

In 2008-09, the deficit was lower than it had been since before 1979.

That is a fact.

Worrying about national debt as percentage of national income is simplistic: from approximately 1740 to the late 1870s, for instance, the UK consistently had a national debt of over 100% of national income.

That is a fact.

Things have got worse because of the cretins currently in office, because of policies that are economically illiterate or simply designed to cream off as much as possible for them and their friends.