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It has been a bad week.

Eight British soldiers died in Afghanistan in just 24 hours. Their deaths take the number of troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 184; five higher than the 179 killed in Iraq. It has been the most high intensity fighting British troops have faced since the Korean War in the 1950s.

Many of the deaths are due to powerful Improvised Explosive Devices, and many of these IED deaths could have been avoided by proper equipment.

Sadly, as Harwich MP Douglas Carswell talked about last year, the defence industrial strategy is “more about industry than defence. It does more to safeguard the interests of selected contractors than the interests of the armed forces. The DIS is good at putting large amounts of public money on to the balance sheets of a few contractors, but that is about all it is good for…We cannot both shore up our defence industrial base and provide our armed forces with the best value kit in the world; it is a logical impossibility. The DIS is, in reality, a corporatist, protectionist racket. Lobbyists for the DIS on the political left justify it as a means of preserving jobs. The same arguments once trotted out to justify Government subsidy of British Leyland are used to legitimise squandering our defence budget. To those on the political right, the fig leaf justification is about something called sovereignty of supply. The same arguments were once trotted out to justify the corn laws.”

I agree with Douglas Carswell entirely on this. There is no excuse for putting our servicemen’s lives at risk to protect the British defence industry; if a British firm can deliver the goods, great, but if it can’t then it should be No Deal. We must buy the best. Ultimately this is in the best interests of the British defence industry anyway, as it should force them to improve and maybe get some export orders!

But most of all what matters - the ONLY thing that matters - is the safety of our forces. If we are to ask our soldiers to Be The Best, then we must BUY The Best! If seeing a less Union Flags on the Country of Manufacture labels means we see a less Union Flags wrapped around coffins passing through Wootton Bassett, then it will have been a small price indeed.

First we talked about whether there would be a recession.

Then we talked about who was to blame.

Then we talked about what to do about it.

There then followed a not so brief interlude during which ice creams and refreshments (including Hobnobs and dog food) were served whilst we discussed duck islands, the intricacies of moat maintenance, the impact of OCD upon breakfast habits and the finer points of astrology.

That over, we talked about how bad the recession would be…

…And now we’re talking about what letter of the alphabet its shape will be on the graph!

The British public discourse has had some strange moments of late, but this really takes the biscuit (but then if it’s Chris Huhne’s Hobnob biscuit we paid for it anyway)…

What is it with economists, have they all gone mad and decided to describe every possible outcome as the shape of a letter or did it just come to them one day at lunch over a bowl of Alphabetti Spaghetti? Perhaps we are now getting economic news from Sesame Street?

The deluded think it’ll be a V-shaped recession; sharp drop, sharp bounce back. V.

Some expect a U-shaped recession; a sharp drop with a sharp rebound like the V but after a period of flatness between the two. U.

My bet is on W; in effect a second U-shaped (or V-shaped if you go German and call W ‘double-V’) recession after a small rebound from the first. W.

Rather alarming is the L-shaped recession, a sudden fall then flat-lining; and the Y, a U or V shaped recession followed by a second possibly sharper drop. L and Y.

I suppose we could have N, M, J, Y, and I as well. Maybe a lowercase ‘r’ and ‘h’?

The Great Depression gave us the game of Monopoly, the recession of 08/09/10 looks set to give us Economic Scrabble.