http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18383804

'It's Johnny Foreigner, you couldn't watch him!'

He has a point. The ongoing crisis is hurting all the Eurozone economies, which reduces our exports and reduces toursim from there.

Whether it's all that, I don't know... But I certainly don't agree with Balls that it's just an excuse. It's fact (or partial fact), and it wasn't predicted by any politicians at the last election.

I'm in no doubt that if the eurozone was doing well and so were we, he wouldn't be giving the euro zone a single iota of credit for our recovery. And it doesn't change the fact we had/have a double-dip recession, which is the thing he publicly stated his policies were specifically designed to avoid. So excuse me if I don't place much validity on his analysis of the current situation.

Of course Ed Balls is also bound to say what he said, so I don't find that particularly useful either.

The euro zone crash was being predicted by an awful lot of people at the last election. I remember seeing the 'PIGS' description well before then. If he's surprised by I now, he's not been paying attention.

He (Osborne) may well have a point - but what's he doing about it? He's pulling the rug from under the economy with his austerity measures. He's making things worse, not better.

He's massively undermined business and consumer confidence and he is not doing enough to get the banks to lend to businesses, many of which are suffering liquidity problems.

I will point out, by the way, that the measures put in place by Alistair Darling following the 2008 banking crisis kept the UK afloat and we actually enjoyed a period of growth from Q3 2009 all the way through to Q3 2010. Then we had the comprehensive spending review, and the UK economy has sank ever since. I'm not saying the spending review is entirely to blame, but I would venture it has had a significant impact, particularly on confidence.

The UK economy has not grown since the coalition took power over two years ago, and we've just slipped back into recession.

It's also ironic that the very measures which HM Government have undertaken 'to protect the UK's AAA credit rating', actually look like they'll undermine it instead - with Fitch warning just recently that the UK faces a downgrade if the economy does not improve.