According to a headline in today's Washington Post, the "European slump may stall global rebound".  The UK seems to be in one hell of a mess:  

Yesterday, Britain reported that its economy suffered its steepest quarterly decline in 30 years and that car production fell 55 percent in April from a year earlier. On Thursday, Standard & Poor's took the extraordinary step of lowering Britain's credit outlook to negative, raising the spectre of a cut in that nation's golden rating on government bonds.

Some bright spark has now come up with the following advice for the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alastair Darling, on how to solve the financial problems besetting the country:

Dear Mr. Darling,

Please find below my suggestion for fixing Britain's economy. Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them £1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Twenty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.

2) They MUST buy a new British CAR. Twenty million cars ordered - Car Industry fixed.

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed.

4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university or get them a job - Crime rate fixed.

5) They MUST buy at least £50 of alcohol/tobacco a week. There's your money back in duty/tax etc
6) Also, the government should now legalise all drugs. Result? No more tax-evading drug dealers - Treasury collects taxes on 'legal deals' plus the bonus of many prison places vacated. Another 'fix'.

It can't get any easier than that!

PS If more money is needed, have all members of Parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances.

Oh rats! Or should that be PIGS!

The inevitable letter from the school arrived today. It's looking grim.

But is this total overload and panic?

My teenage son suggests that the talk at school is about how the education authorities are terrified of being sued should a child catch this wretched so-called swine flu at the premises.  Here's what the school writes to us today:

We have learned that the DC Department of Health will close a school for at least seven days if there is a confirmed case of swine flu. Such closure would pose considerable problems for our community and in particular for our seniors scheduled for IB examinations over the next three weeks.

 

If there are other members in your household, such as nannies or housekeepers, who have recently returned from Mexico, we ask to be informed of this as well. I request that in any such case all members of that household not enter the school for a period of ten days following the household member's departure from Mexico. I ask that a parent who exhibits any flu-like illness should immediately notify us and keep his or her children out of school until cleared by a health care provider.

It is my hope that no one in our community will be affected by these measures. However, I ask for your full support should they need to be enforced. If other countries are added to the CDC or WHO warning list, we plan to take similar action.

Is this what preventive medicine is all about? Isn't this just a little over the top at this stage? Are other countries reacting in this manner? 

Well, looks like we got out of Blighty in the nick of time. 

Ever since we fled, things have just gone from bad to worse.

It's looking catastrophic from where I'm sitting!

Now, after the worst Budget in living memory, the Telegraph is asking whether it is “Time to bail out of Britain?”.

What an utter nightmare the country is facing - for at least the next decade!

It’s all-out class warfare now with doubtless a massive brain drain on the cards.

It’s time to quit. And if he (the Chancellor) won’t, maybe we should. It’s not as if there’s anything to stay for, now. Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that in 2006 a total of 207,000 UK citizens left the country – that’s one every three minutes. And isn’t the prospect of joining them a secretly thrilling thought?

Very helpfully, the newspaper offers readers a guide to living abroad with a thumbnail sketch of the countries some might choose to flee to. Adding as a parting shot 

How will history judge Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, under whose watch the country has been brought to its knees? What will future generations make of their catastrophic policies and intemperate borrowing? Where will it all end? Who cares? We’re off.

 * Picture: "The Last of England" by Ford Madox Brown, 1855

Americans really hate big government and they loathe paying taxes. Today is 15 April, the deadline for filing US tax returns. And the anti tax brigade have been out in force. They object wildly to high government spending, Wall Street bailouts and rising tax rates.

Spotted parked by the side of the road this placard-covered truck. 

Unlike in Britain where we just moan and cough up the exhorbitant taxes demanded by government, here they object loud and clear.  There have been "tea party" protests, styled on the 1773 Boston Tea Party revolt against British colonial taxes. There was even one right outside the White House.

Today the US TV networks have been covering these demonstrations all over the country. 

It's a really big deal here. 

The economy here in the US is now so bad that the federal government has set up a new website to try and help people struggling with the effects of the severe recession. It is called SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) and it raises warning flags for people suffering from persistent depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, fatigue, excessive irritability or anger.

This is what the greed and irresponsibility of the bankers has led to. People’s health is suffering grievously under the immense stress they are under due to unemployment, foreclosures, loss of value of their investments and terror as to what the future holds.

This website is paid for by the government so the seriousness of the situation cannot be over emphasised. 

It can be particularly devastating to your emotional and mental well-being. Although each of us is affected differently by economic troubles, these problems can add tremendous stress.

The nation faces a catastrophe. The new online page provides an aggregation of relevant information and resources from each state and the District of Columbia, as well as the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and Treasury. This is similar to what the agency published after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Katrina to address potential mental health or substance abuse concerns arising from those events.

One section is called “Suicide Warning Signs”

Unemployment and other kinds of financial distress do not "cause" suicide directly, but they can be factors that interact dynamically within individuals and affect their risk for suicide. These financial factors can cause strong feelings such as humiliation and despair, which can precipitate suicidal thoughts or actions among those who may already be vulnerable to having these feelings because of life-experiences or underlying mental or emotional conditions (e.g., depression, bi-polar disorder) that place them at greater risk of suicide.

These are some of the signs you may want to be aware of in trying to determine whether you or someone you care about could be at risk for suicide:

Threatening to hurt or kill oneself or talking about wanting to hurt or kill oneself

Looking for ways to kill oneself

Thinking or fantasysing about suicide

Acting recklessly

Seeing no reason for living or having no sense of purpose in life

If you or someone you care about are having suicidal thoughts or showing these symptoms SEEK IMMEDIATE HELP. Contact your healthcare provider, mental health crisis center, hospital emergency room or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) for help.

I watch my TV and see hundreds of rioters today in the City of London attacking banks and police officers. I wonder why there is none of that here. Why are people not taking to the streets in the USA? What are the cultural differences between America and Europe that means the former seem so passive in the face of this unmitigated disaster?

Where is "The American Dream"?  Do people still believe in it? Perhaps that is the answer. They really do have faith that things will get better but in Europe they have lost even that. I just do not know.