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.

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

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.

No, Britain sure isn’t “cool” any more. In a perceptive article in today’s Observer,

In those days London was the “coolest city on the planet”, a booming multicultural metropolis where the Citysaw the number of foreign banks grow from 73 to 479.    

I lived through all of this. I saw the whole transformation. And now I am here in the USA in contrast to Mr McGuire who resides in London. So I feel in some position of knowledge when I say that I recognise exactly what he refers to when he says that

Although the US and the UK are both racked by economic chaos, America feels like a country on the move and Britain a country at a standstill.

Yes, it’s bad here but somehow, so far, despite everything, Americans still believe that there will be a bright new dawn sometime around the corner. That isn’t what I found in London on my recent trip home a mere fortnight ago. There it really was doom and gloom…along with boiling, anger, resentment and fear for social cohesion.

Mr McGuire points out, as I did, that the brand new multimillion pound just opened Westfield shopping mall in Shepherds Bush does not appear to be attracting people who want to spend much money! And he describes how Brits now exhibit

...a lack of confidence, an unsettled sense of identity.

Yes. Spot on.

And spot on too is the observation that if Gordon Brown

...didn't see the financial meltdown coming, he did see the social pressures that were building that would threaten the country's cohesion. At the time Britain was struggling to absorb the greatest wave of immigration in its history: in 2004 and 2005 alone more than 600,000 immigrants poured in, mostly from eastern Europe. In 2005, the 7/7 London bombings, carried out as they were by home-grown radicals, delivered a grim message to an anxious society: terrorism is being nurtured on British soil.

But from what I could see, it’s now a case of "finger in the dyke". It’s too late. I saw the writing on the wall about ten years ago.

Staving off a collective sinking feeling will not be easy. Some of the pillars that British identity once rested upon are long gone or substantially weakened: empire, the country's great industrial base, the monarchy and the Church of England. Even the English language suffers in its birthplace: it may dominate the globe but, according to a recent Home Office study, only 26% of the 1.3 million British residents of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent are fluent in it. By choice as much as by accident of geography and history, Britain has become an outlier among world powers, an island in more ways than one.

This is a catastrophe unfolding rapidly before our eyes.

And from what I am hearing, Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, is on course to be elected a Euro MP in the European elections this coming June.

“Cool Britannia”? You must be joking. “Sick Britannia” more like.  

Here there is boiling rage. 

And with that there are some really great bumper stickers emerging. 

The shine on the Obama mania is rapidly turning to rust.  Criticism is coming to the fore - not least over the scandalous bonuses still being handed out to errant bankers. 

Will there be social unrest here?  Certainly the honeymoon period is over for this administration.  Hard questions are being asked about where on earth we are all heading.      

People are worried stiff about their pensions, their dwindling investments, the taxes that for sure are coming their way shortly and most of all their childrens' futures. Where are the jobs for them? How will they manage to pay off their student loans, find a job and get on the property ladder? They won't. It can't be done. So I predict a massive brain drain. Those who can get out of the country will do so - just as we did.

It was a depressing scenario.....but there was one rare bright spot.

The new Westfield shopping centre in Shepherds Bush which, over the last few years, I have watched from my office window being built.  At last it was completed and I could go inside and......shop!  And what an experience it was. A glittering architectural masterpiece stuck in the middle of one of the grimmest parts of West London.

I chose to go in at the weekend and it was packed. Here was Disneyland in W12. It's a shopper's delight. But I was struck by how many people were visiting and how few were carrying purchases.

There appeared to be a disconnect here somehow.

And now I read in the Evening Standard that my impression was pretty accurate. 

Westfield's footfall has fallen from an initial 660,000 a week to around 400,000, a 40% decline. February was 25% down on November, but more worrying is what lies ahead.....quite a few shops are on the blink and drastically cutting back staff. 

Yes, YSL hadn't opened, I spotted that much. And Principles had already gone bust. There were too many empty units and it looks like their number will grow. It's bad timing and mighty bad luck.

Then it was off to Oxford, City of Dreaming Spires.  Walking back to my hotel at about 11.00pm, as the gowned students and dons left their end of term dinners and parties, I found myself having to jump over piles of vomit spattered like cowpats on the pavements.  Dear oh dear.  Yet another nasty return to Earth.  I know Britain is supposedly wallowing in drink and drugs but I didn't expect to be confronted by it in Oxford of all places. Very disappointing. Perhaps, knowing what the future holds for them, the Bright Young Things are drowning their sorrows.  

"Welcome Back" said the cheery Border Control officer at Dulles airport.  I am not even a US passport holder, I am merely in possession of a Green card.  No one has ever welcomed me on entry to my "home" country. 

You know, perhaps I am really starting to feel that this place is home!

I am going on a two week visit to see what the Olde Country is like after my six months away. It's a chance to catch up with family and friends and get a feel for what's happening back "home" - or is Blighty still my home these days?  This will be my first ever experience of Terminal 5 Heathrow - so that's something to look forward to - or not as the case may be! Since I have been away the recession has really started to bite with a vengeance, same as here in the USA.  I will be hearing how my unemployed friends are faring. Are employment prospects there as dire as they are here? I fear so. What are prices in the shops like? Is there huge discounting going on and "Going Out Of Business" signs up as I spot are now cropping up here? Are people dreadfully despondent?

I am off on my adventure and will report back as and when I can!

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." 

Thomas Jefferson 1802 – letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.