The Boom-and-Bust Bakery

Economics, like baking, is a tricky thing. I say this in full knowledge that my own economic understanding is comparable to making rice-crispie cakes.
     The BBC headed up tonight's 6 o'clock news with a report on the rate of economic growth in the country and Head Chef and Chancellor George Osbourne's response to it. Over the last 12 months, our economic cake, if you will, has risen by only 0.7% (compare with Western Australia's puffing up of 4.3% in the same period), but Big Cook defends his handling of our new culinary foray, citing numerous causes for a slow rate of recovery.

     The Royal Wedding meant people had an extra day to get pissed instead of working; public sector workers went on strike, leaving the ovens unattended, a fair few times; the Japanese earthquake slowed down (but, tellingly, did not stop) the rate of production of thousands of products sold in the UK. We're told the British Economic Cake is “more susceptible than others” to these kinds of factors, so maybe we've just got a dodgy oven.

     But the one thing to which it is most susceptible, you ask? The one thing that makes British bakers and Economists grumble more than anything else? The weevil in our flour, the fly in our ointment? The annoying kid who keeps sticking his fingers in the half-cooked batter?

     You guessed it. The weather.

     The financial year started out with a hot Easter, which made our little economy sweat and flounder, followed by a rainy summer and snow-filled winter, which respectively soaked and froze it, leaving little chance for the poor thing to develop in its own good time.

     This is all understandable. Maybe. Except this phrase - “more susceptible than others.” Why are our ovens dodgy? Why does our cake whimper in fear the moment the thermostat goes a little too high, or, heaven forbid, a little too low?

     Following sincere shots of Osbourne and Shadow Chancellor (sous-Chef) Ed Balls peering over the shoulders of teenagers working manually and with machines the likes of which they have probably never imagined, the BBC's fun graphics showed us the rate of the economy's recovery after the last three decades' economic downturns.

     What?? (shouts the twenty-year-old with the rose-tinted glasses) This has happened before?? Three times before?? It's enough to make one drop one's mixing-bowl.

     The seventies, eighties and nineties all saw a period of 'economic downturn', after which the country took a maximum of 48 months to get back on its feet and dust itself down. The brightly-coloured graphics super-imposed onto a part of the factory at which Osbourne and Balls were staring so bemusedly predict another 20 months on top of this maximum before we can turn out something palatable.

     Seeing the wiggly lines of a country's finances splayed on a graph brings to mind another tenuous metaphor. There are those who argue that there is no Greenhouse Effect, no eternal sunshine awaiting us, and that the rise in global temperature, the melting of the icecaps and the increasing amount of burnt skin among the Scots is part of a natural global trend as old as the earth itself- a rise and fall which swings us between tropic and ice-age, a boom -and-bust on a grand scale.

     Reduce the scale, then. Is economic downturn just part of the circle of life? Have we spent years since our last financial crisis firing up our ovens only to have to blow out all the hot air again?

     And if, as it would appear, our economy is so very fragile and concerned about the antics of important national figures, I wonder how the troubles of News International will affect us. With British companies closing their doors up and down the high street, and Osbourne's buns still wilting, it remains to be seen whether we can produce something better than an under-cooked Victoria Sponge or a collapsed Apple Crumble.

          Maybe we should stick to rice-crispie cakes.