How bad is it economically in the UK?

First the figures. We officially entered recession a few days ago when the Office of National Statistics issued figures showing the second successive quarterly fall in the price of goods as measured by the CPI. In the last quarter, the price of goods and services fell by 1.5%. Repossessions are up sharply. Lending is tightly restricted by banks, due to a major crisis in the interbank lending markets, and their inability to borrow with bonds. This is preventing even sound businesses from obtaining trade finance. To translate that to the man in the street, my cleaners son-in-law who is a carpenter has no work, and is considering going abroad to find work. My friends dad was just laid off by the company he was a director at, and they are having to sell their house in a falling market to release capital. They may have to move to a less expensive region that one of his parents lived in before. My fathers pension fund is falling, as british government debt is falling and the cash fund only offers banks he doesn't trust. I went past a notice board which had an advert for waiters to work at a restaurant, and 20 metres down the street walked past the restaurant, and it had a sign saying it had closed until further notice. They are closing down that fast. There are several half built blocks of flats next to my college, which that stopped building last year because it is not viable to finish building them. Domino's, who sell pizzas (which people buy when they stay in instead of going out), and Morrisons, Asda, Aldi and Primark (discount retailers) are the only firms not making losses. The government owns majority stakes in two major banks, one of which just lost 7 times the value of it's shares. The government just took an extra 12% stake in that bank, taking it's stake to 70%. The chief executive and chair had already resigned, to be replaced by government nominees. The pound is plumetting, indicating that the markets expect britain to fair worse than other countries. Financial services were the only thing that kept our balance of payments even remotely balanced.

All in all, not good.

Some parts of UK are being hit harder than others by the present credit crunch and economic downturn. Here where I live in SE London [Greenwich], you'd hardly know there's a recession. The burough is wealthy and most of us own our own homes outright. The only effect on myself thus far is I'm now getting less interest from my savings, but I have an index linked pension plus the UK State pension, which means I'm okay. I'm aware however that there are lots of redundancies in the industrial areas and also in the banking and insurance of the City of London. The truth about any recession is that the vast majority of workers will remain in employment and will hardly notice any change in their lives. I'll be honest about this. I was born in 1941 and have gone thru' lots of these ups and downs but have hardly noticed and just sailed on as though nothing was happening. However, for those who are losing their jobs, they do have the wealfare state to keep them going. People with redundancy money should use this where needed to pay off as much of their mortageges as possible. Good luck to everyone. . . .it's never so bad as you think. Crime in UK is on the decrase at present. Burglary is on the up - people out of work breaking into houses to take whatever they can. For those caught there will be no mercy since the UK.gov will throw the book at them and hand down long sentences - maybe 5 years to start then going on up to 8 or more years. The demand here in UK is for longer sentences, esp for crimes of violence etc.

Its pretty much the same here. 2 million people set to be unemployed soon with only 500k jobs available. More firms going bust every day. Housing markets gone dramatically down hill. Price of renting rocketing. Home repossessions up about 90%. Currently I am living with my boyfriend. He works, earning about £12k/year, I'm a student earning nothing (student loan of about £100/month) and we can barely cope with the bills. Having to get more and more loan from the student loan company to pay for food until I graduate. 1 of my friends' Dad has just been made redundant and their family home may be repossessed in a couple of months as her Mum can't afford the mortgage. Basically - it's bad.

on Friday it was announced that we are officially in a recession.

Other figures out this week revealed that the number of people out of work rose by 131,000 between September and November last year to hit 1.92 million - the highest level of unemployment since August 1997.

The number claiming unemployment benefit now stands at 1.157 million – the highest since 2000 – and experts predict this will surpass two million in the latter half of 2009 as companies cut costs as demand falls.

At the same time house prices continue to fall, mortgage lending is at its lowest level for eight years and the number of people facing repossession is up 92%.

I think this is a global disaster, affected the whole world, and as a citizen in third-world state, we are suffering more from these changes.

any way the question why ?

and who started the whole financial disaster, who gain the profits ?

I think the UK is about six months behind the US.

very bad

bad bad