Snowmail: UK is teetering on an economic cliff edge

Last Modified: 22 Aug 2008
By: Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Alex Thomson

The latest from tonight's show including Britain's economic gloom, lost data sticks and the news from the Beijing

It's one of the strange things about standing on the edge of a cliff, you often don't feel as though you're in imminent peril. Today new figures suggest mortgage rates are back to pre-credit crunch levels and the government is all a flutter over packages to help both housing and fuel poverty next month.

But there is a huge elephant in this email: Britain has flatlined.

The economy is officially at zero growth and there is no reason to think that the steady decline this year will not continue. That almost certainly means negative growth in the next quarter and with no reason to think it will be a short-lived affair almost certainly recession.

But there are many peculiarities about this moment - one that hasn't happened for 16 years. The cliff edge is more like a steady but gentle slope. Unemployment is still relatively low and while spending is down it hasn't fallen off that cliff yet.

Tonight: what does it mean and what will happen? Is there anything the government can do and does it make an interest rate cut more likely?

Lost data stick

The embarrassing loss of a data stick containing the details of more than 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales has been attacked by both the opposition and those interested in the welfare of prisoners.

While the initial temptation might to have little sympathy for the privacy of convicted criminals, the Prison Reform Trust point out the personal details of their families may also have been compromised. And while the chances are this data has not fallen into dangerous hands until it is found (which is very unlikely) nobody can give those innocent people any reassurances

Gary Glitter back in the UK

The farce that has been the pursuit of Gary Glitter from first class airport lounge to first class airport lounge in Asia is over. The convicted sex offender is back in Britain, whereabouts unknown but he will have to sign the sex offenders register within three days a judge has ruled.

Glitter is still protesting his innocence and this whole episode has prompted the government at least to re-examine the possible controls that can be exerted on sex offenders who may poise a threat both to this society and those abroad.

Over to Alex now, see you at seven.

Beijing's jinx and the latest from the Olympics

Well the magnificent bullion haul of recent days really couldn't go on, could it? Sure enough, we've seen a curious mix here today of sterling, flawless gold medal performance and then utterly incomprehensible failure.

A gold in the 1,000m kayaking and silver in the women's modern pentathlon as well as two bronzes in the boxing. By previous Olympic standards anybody in the UK would regard that as a great day at the office and so it is. The only problem is that it is fringed by the sense of what might have been.

What if Shanaze Reade had cruised to the gold as expected instead of coming off yet again? She was a shoe-in, but it just wasn't to be and she must look back at the Beijing track and think it jinxed.

Then comes the women's 4 x 100m final. Now after yesterday's freak failure to hand over the baton within the grid on the final exchange, it simply could not happen again could it? It did.

There will be long inquests into how this could happen at all - let alone twice to two teams in two days.

Away from the track, field, boxing rings and so forth - the controversy over whether or not China's double gold-medallist gymnast is 16 years old or 14 continues. Today the IOC said they would like the paperwork checked again.

Given the IOC is clinically averse to upsetting China in any way, shape or form it seems, this is a significant development. But China will simply counter the allegations all the way, word for word, document for document, website for website. Expect no resolution to this one soon - if at all.