http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21737992

The CBI/BCC view

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21735280

The posh boys were terrified of swaying from their course, in case the credit rating agencies downgrading the UK. It's happened now, so why not have a re-think? Clearly, the current plan isn't working, but are we in danger of continued pain through political stubbornness and fear of losing face?

The problem is that the fact that governments around the world have trapped us in a plan to save the banks that any other plan is also doomed to failure. So if they tried proper Keynesian policies which they never will then all it will do is maintain the existing bubbles. The current problem is that wages are too weak to maintain the economy. You only have to see that the current policies are actually weakening the economy to realise that they will not change direction. This is ideological.

Central banks have over the last generation used every weapon in their power to weaken the effects of recessions, so when we should have had much deeper recession with lots of bankruptcies in 2008 the plan was to alleviate the pain for reckless borrowers, because that will collapse our banking system. So while the banks are now paying bonuses again the rest of the economy is in a mess. We still have excessive debts throughout the private sector and if they could borrow the terms are usury. Big businesses are doing well, because they have trillions of cash sitting in the banks doing nothing. While small businesses are struggling to get capital to expand. Small businesses create the vast majority of new jobs, but as they get bigger they do not create as many jobs. What we are going through is the start of a Japanese lost 20 years.