Daily Telegraph: "All economic measures are fallible; some are dangerous"

"By using our past mistakes to judge our current performance, we condemn ourselves to repeating the cycle "

Link to web site

"The revisionist news about the UK economy just keeps getting better. Less than six months ago, with the International Monetary Fund breathing down George Osborne’s neck, the country was thought to have narrowly escaped a triple-dip recession. The economy appeared to have managed a somewhat anaemic 0.3pc of growth in the first three months of the year.

"... [However, remember that] the financial crisis was the end of one of the biggest credit binges in history. Among the things that the bubble inflated were economic growth and median income in the western world. Why then do we continue to measure ourselves in reference to a rate of economic output that was by definition unsustainable and indeed placed us in such a perilous predicament?

"Worse than that, by using our past mistakes to judge our current performance, we condemn ourselves to repeating the cycle. Critics of the Government’s austerity programme used it as a yardstick with which to beat George Osborne. Had they got their way and forced the Chancellor to change his course, perhaps the double and triple-dips would have been for real. "

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" 'The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It' review – Owen Jones's biting critique of the elite"

"A passionate account of injustice reveals the lies peddled by our leaders"

Link to The Observer

"Why is it that the people who caused the financial crash have got away with it while those who played no part have been punished? This, essentially, is the question that Owen Jones poses in his passionate account of political and economic injustice. In searching for the answer he, like other columnists before him, has alighted on the "e" word, the establishment.

"David Cameron, the Conservative chameleon de nos jours, saw an opportunity in the mayhem wreaked by the bankers. Before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the leader of the opposition had pledged to match Labour's spending plans. As the author points out, Cameron quickly changed tack and deftly turned crisis into opportunity.

"Prompted by financiers and their friends, he turned economics on its head, declaring that the problem was caused not by an out-of-control financial services industry but by a bloated state. Cuts became the mantra to turn Britain back on to the path of prosperity."