Is recession just a state of mind? Well partly, as it all depends where you are, what you’re doing (or did, if you’ve lost your job) and on the effect whatever’s happening to ‘the economy’ has on you. Just as everyone has a personal inflation rate – for some, the price of a pint of milk, for others, spending £150 instead of £100 on a meal in a nice restaurant – it may be life-changing or recession-schmcession. In 1992, my job was to recruit new financial advisers, and I saw an endless trail of recently-redundant engineers and others desperate to save their homes from repossession. By the time of the next one, 2008/9, I was working with mostly-retired clients who were glad to be out of the workforce. With a government propping-up, rather than letting everything collapse, it all felt more positive than negative to someone like me who had just started their own business at the depths of the fall. Then, of course, came austerity. But I think we’ve learned that lesson. Haven’t we?
“Budget 2024: £105m for 15 special free schools, and nothing else”
There were a hundred or more different headlines I could have pinched, but I thought this one illustrated what’s most important: that what’s most important to me or to him is not likely for me to be what’s most important to you.