The Guardian View on the UK Recession: No Growth and No Ideas Either

THE GUARDIAN – EDITORIAL: The Conservatives have presided over a shrunken British economy, and Rishi Sunak does not have a clue how to make it grow again

“We’re on the up!” claimed the Daily Express about the British economy on Thursday . Sorry, loyal Conservative cheerleaders, but exactly the reverse is true. Instead of being on the up, we’re on the slide. On Thursday, the Office for National Statistics announced that the UK is in fact in recession, with a 0.3% drop in gross domestic product for the last quarter of 2023 to follow a 0.1% drop in the third quarter. The economy is therefore getting smaller. This is a recession. It is a huge national blow, both economically and politically.

It is true that the slide into recession has been a gentle one. Few economists believe that the announcement portends a downward lurch to compare with the recession of 1980 or the one after the financial crisis in 2009, when GDP fell by more than 4%. Do not, though, be misled by talk of a “technical” recession. An economy is either growing or it is not. Ours is not growing. It is shrinking. » | Editorial | Thursday, February 15, 2024

UK Recession: Mistresses Are the Credit Crunch's Latest Victims
La maja desnuda. (Francisco Goya, 1800-1805, Oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid.) Courtesy of Google Images

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee; 
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be 
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
 Are like Atlanta’s ball cast in men’s views; 
That, when a fool’s eye lighteth on a gem, 
His earthly soul might court that, not them. 
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made 
For laymen, are all women thus array’d.
 Themselves are only mystic books, which we
 - Whom their imputed grace will dignify - 
Must see reveal’d. – Elegy XX. 'To His Mistress Going to Bed' by John Donne

THE TELEGRAPH: Mistresses have become an unnecessary expense during the recession.

'When a man marries his mistress," the late Sir James Goldsmith famously said, "he creates a vacancy." In today's economic climate, that "vacancy" looks increasingly likely to remain unfilled.

As men, fearful for their jobs and marriages, seek to cut back on their assets and expenditures, mistresses are facing a cull. A recent survey reports that nearly half of analysts, stockbrokers and hedge-fund managers are preparing to let the other woman go. There's no doubt about it: these are bad times for the good time girls.

"Like luxury cars, mistresses require a lot of time and money to be spent on them," says Josh Spero, senior editor of Spear's Wealth Management Survey, "so when it comes to wealthy men cutting back, the other woman is near the top of their list."

Although modern mistresses may differ from their historical counterparts – in the past, royal mistresses of European monarchs such as Nell Gwynne and Madame de Pompadour were not simply kept women but figures of immense influence – the fragrant breed exists in a variety of forms. "It may be a far cry from 18th and 19th-century France," says Oliver James, the psychologist, "but there are different types of mistresses around today, including the 'other women' who describe themselves as 'mistresses' without feeling there are any negative connotations attached."

Should these credit crunch squeezes survive the cull, their prospects (as for so many in the private sector) will be humbler. In America, where the recession is more deeply entrenched, newly parsimonious guidelines are already being established by prolific adulterers: according to a recent survey by Prince and Associates, a market research firm specialising in private wealth, more than 80 per cent of multi-millionaires who had extra-marital lovers are cutting back on their gifts and allowances.

"Rich people are getting hit, and they're all expressing the need to curtail unnecessary spending," said Russ Alan Prince, the firm's president. "Lovers are part of the same calculation." >>> By Celia Walden | Thursday, March 26, 2009