Government's new Five Year Plan

It's called "WTF?", according to Westminster insiders.

I just heard two economists on Radio 4, including retail sector analyst Richard Hyman of DeLoitte's, saying they haven't a clue what's happening with the economy, or to be more specific, the retail sector of it.

Hyman said 'I don't know what's going on and I won't even try to explain it because I can't.' Another said he hasn't seen retail conditions like the present in a quarter of a century.

House builders are going down the tubes and the construction industry won't touch big residential or retail projects at any price, for the foreseeable future. They are especially averse to 'affordable housing', for any number of reasons aired on File on 4 tonight. Richard Wise, chief executive of developers Centros said that the number of town and city schemes that may have to be delayed or shelved across the UK was now into "double figures'.

That's happy news for the people protesting at Brown's laughable-if-they-weren't-tragic 'eco towns', one of which, planned for very near me, is bang on a known water-shortage disaster area. Good planning, Tesco and Squirrelface.

All this on top of the British Chambers of Commerce saying today that a serious recession is now imminent, and that it will be sharper and last longer than they previously thought.

To which problems he is the solution, Gordon Brown announced as he emerged from his Japanese bunker-de-luxe. His are the safe hands we need to steer us through an unprecedented crisis which no-one in the City saw coming - and neither did he.

All his mendacious estimates, delusional forecasts and laughable targets are falling apart under the pressure of the invisible hand, which is slapping him round the face for his vicious taxation policies and socialist-economics illiteracy over eleven years. All those papers over which he toiled into the night, year in and year out, are turning to hamster-bedding.