Recent U.S.  gross domestic product data show the world's biggest economy emerged from recession in the third quarter, while in the UK data show that in the same period Britain's economy contracted.

British economist and author John Kay theorizes that Britain is mired in its worst recession on record in part because government support has not been evenly distributed across sectors.

"We've poured money into the financial sector -- by and large the financial sector in Britain is doing OK," he said.  "But very little of that is getting through to small and medium-size businesses out there in the rest of the economy."

If the Hollands Wood campsite in the New Forest, near England's south coast is anything to go by, the recession really is altering the holidaymaking habits of the British public.

On the often rain-sodden site three Porches, a couple of Jaguars and numerous BMWs and Mercedes were spotted among the more typical, Skodas and Ford Mondeos usually associated with roughing it under canvas.

Unlike for the same period last year, the campsite was solidly booked out, despite no sign of the barbecue summer the weathermen promised.

One camper, Sarah, a senior publishing executive gave some clues to explaining the popularity of the cost-effective approach to getting away from it all.

"I've had a bonus every year for the last 15 years, until this year. I used it to pay off my credit card bills and then start again on the next year's spending which included the holiday."

It was the first ever experience for her family of five on a campsite and it was a bit less upmarket than last year's holiday spent in a gite in the fashionable French Dordogne.

But the dark cloud of a severly impared income and a soggy English holiday had one silver lining.

"It has reminded me of the truth that all my four year old needs is a stick and a puddle to be truly happy."

(Reuters photo: Eddie Keogh, Glastonbury 2005)

In the blink of an eye it look as if the City is “booming” again after Barclays and HSBC announced buoyant investment banking earnings on Monday.

Both banks were hit by a surge in bad debts as the recession took its toll on borrowers, but analysts said that resurgent debt and foreign exchange trading and market share grabbed from troubled rivals fuelled the largely positive results.

Barclays announced an eight percent rise in profits for the first six months of the year to almost three billion pounds, while HSBC reported profits of the same amount, though this was half what they made during the same period in 2008.

The results have led to speculation that some City workers will once again receive bumper bonus packages just months after the banking sector was bailed out by the taxpayer.

Barclays’ Chief Executive John Varley defended the system of bonus payments by comparing his staff to highly-paid footballers.

“The football analogy certainly goes some way to I think [to explain bonuses]….There is simply no higher priority that to ensure we filed the very best people,” said Varley. “That in a sense is exactly the same as a football manager if they are going to win. Our obligation is to ensure we pay appropriately.”

Which begs the question of whether you would rather watch Steven Gerrard scoring a goal or pay a visit to your local Barclays branch manager.

While Varley juggled his football metaphors, Stuart Gulliver, who runs the investment bank at HSBC, used a different analogy, comparing the bank bonus culture to the Hollywood studio salary system.

“If a foreign exchange trader makes a deal then they know two days later how much they made,” said Gulliver. “If it’s a £5m profit, that is something we can count, we can see it, it’s real. And they are part of a successful team.”

Barclays and HSBC did not receive government handouts but all the banks benefited from state intervention that used £1.2bln of taxpayer funds to prop up the banking system.

Do you think it is right that big bonuses reappear so soon after the height of the banking crisis and while homeowners, savers and small businesses are still struggling?

British pubs are closing at a rate of more than 50 a week, according to industry figures. The number of watering holes shutting up shop increased by a third in the first six months of 2009 to around 52 every week.

The British Beer and Pubs Association (BBPA) said the closure rate means a total of 2,377 pubs have closed over the last 12 months with the loss of 24,000 jobs. The BBPA blames above-average increases in alcohol duty, the cost of regulation and the recession for the worrying trend.

The smoking ban, poor weather last summer and cheap alcohol offers in supermarkets have also been blamed for driving drinkers away from the pubs.

Do you still have a traditional British pub in your area? Do you still use it? What do you think is to blame for the pub industry’s slow demise?

MacroScope is pleased to post the following from guest blogger Julian Chillingworth. Chillingworth is chief investment officer of UK investor Rathbones. He questions here whether Britain will face a second downturn shortly after struggling out of recession.

Are we likely to witness a two-tier recession in the UK?  Perhaps not a recession but certainly a secondary downturn. A vast number of people have enjoyed lower mortgage payments and a level of job security, but will this last?

The UK is in somewhat of a unique position in so far as it faces a regime change, with some obvious ramifications for policy.  However, whoever takes the seat (most likely the Tories) must still cut back public expenditure and raise taxation, both within the context of high unemployment.

It will require the wisdom of Solomon as a further rise in unemployment hits tax-take and results in rising social security payments. Who would want to be George Osborne?!

Key will also be the state of the financial services industry, the banks – other G7 nations do not have the ‘core component’ element to deal with in this respect – and the consumer won’t be moved in any meaningful fashion until there is real evidence of stability there.

Economic news is improving, but in the near term sentiment will be led by the direction of earnings.

The bottom line is the US might be troughing out, but this time round, we in the UK could be on our own for a little while longer.

It will be the end of an era. Associated Newspapers has announced that it will shut the analogue Teletext TV service in January next year.

The shutdown was expected to take place in 2012 and the company has also said that it will even close several of its Freeview digital services. The service has been badly hit by a fall in audiences and revenue brought on by the economic downturn.

Teletext services have been running since 1974, providing news and weather reports, football results and film listings. Some commercial services on digital channels will remain, as will the profitable travel websites.

Will you miss Teletext? Do you still use it? What are your memories of the service?

Britain's recession, like the downturns in most other places, is being hailed as either having reachえｄ bottom or tailed off in its decline. The latest to trumpet the beginning of the end is the British Chambers of Commerce, which said business orders and sales had continued to fall in the second quarter but at a slower pace than previously.

So does this mean that the Bank of England will soon start raising interest rates from the negligible 0.5 percent reached last year as policymakers sought to pump liquidity into a failing economy? Not according to researchers Capital Economics, which argues in a new report that market assumptions of higher rates at an early stage are misplaced. They offer three reasons:

-- A return to strong levels of activity and rapid price gains in the housing market is unlikely for some time, even at very low interest rates. Meanwhile, the overall economy is likely to expand at only sluggish rates in the foreseeable future. And even if the recovery continues to gather pace, the large amount of spare capacity - or slack - in the economy suggests that there should be no hurry to tighten policy at all.

-- Even when monetary policy is finally tightened, some part of this will involve the reversal of the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme. Although the likely order of events is far from clear, this could delay the need for a conventional tightening in the form of higher interest rates.

-- Thirdly, there is good chance that monetary policy in general takes a back seat to a substantial tightening of fiscal policy as the government responds to the growing pressure to sort out the public finances. This is likely to take the form both of higher taxes and a severe squeeze on public spending and would require monetary policy to be kept correspondingly loose to prevent the economy from slipping back into recession.

So, essentially, the BoE will not be able to raise rates because a) the economy is a long way from good b) it has other things to unwind first and c) life is going to be so miserable for Britons that low interest rates will be their only salvation.

This latter point is beginning to excerise a lot of thought in Britain, with the head of the Audit Commission criticising politicans for failing to be honest about the need for cutbacks, given a forecasted £175 billion public deficit this year -- more than 12 percent ofgross domestic product.

"People had better understand this is an unprecedented situation. We have never seen anything like this in your lifetime or mine," Former prime Minister John Major, who knows quite a bit about crises, told TV presenter Andrew Marr.

(Reuters photos: Eddie Keogh and Darren Staples)

Marks & Spencer is finally getting to grips with the recession, first-quarter results from the bellwether retailer show. But it needs to sort out a row over management if its shares are to enjoy the full benefit.

Many investors are still up in arms over M&S’s decision last year to elevate the charismatic Stuart Rose to executive chairman — combining the roles of chairman and chief executive against corporate governance guidelines.

Rose survived a rebellion last year and must be hoping that forecast-beating first-quarter sales will draw the sting from opponents ahead of next Wednesday’s annual shareholder meeting.

But anger seems unlikely to die down. Three shareholder advisory groups — Glass Lewis, Pirc and RiskMetrics — have urged investors to back a rebel resolution which calls on M&S to appoint an independent chairman by July 2010.

The resolution, from local authority pension funds, is cleverly worded as it supports Rose’s re-election and so, unlike last year’s protest, is a clear vote on the principles of corporate governance and not on the man himself.

Anxious to avoid a fresh battle, Rose recently waived a third of shares awarded to him under a performance plan which some investors said was too generous.

To end the constant sniping that must be a distraction from running the business, Rose may have to compromise again.

Gordon Brown is counting on a swift economic turnaround. It’s probably his Labour Party’s only hope of avoiding a humiliating electoral defeat to the Conservatives next year.

The latest news on the economy has certainly got people in Downing Street smiling. The housing market is stabilising and some commentators are even talking about Britain becoming the first major country to pull out of the recession.

Treasury forecasts of reasonable growth that were derided just two months ago suddenly don’t look so bad.

The Number 10 dream scenario is that the economy recovers strongly, Brown takes the credit and the polls turn in time for a May election.

But what happens if the economy does turn around by the end of the year and the polls don’t get any better?

If that happens, some party strategists are wondering whether that might be a good time for Brown to step down, say in January.

He could say he did what he set out to do — get Britain through the recession — and it was now time for a new face.

The honeymoon bounce could end up being Labour’s only hope.

They say nostalgia isn’t what it used to be but there’s certainly a lot of it around at the moment.

All sorts of things are coming back as the recession forces us to cut back spending and, in some cases, change our habits quite radically.

Take Spam, for example. This deeply unlovely but cheap pork luncheon meat died a death after World War Two and was thankfully never heard of again apart from in the classic Monty Python song. Now it’s back and flying off the shelves by all accounts.

Allotments are also going great guns, with news this week that there’s a waiting list of 40 years in some parts of London.

And now hitch-hiking seems to be making a tentative return.

After the heady years of the 1960s and 1970s, hitching dropped out of fashion as car ownership took off and the view took hold that anyone standing by the road with their thumb stuck out must, by definition, be a murdering psychopath.

Most of them were, of course, but some were just savouring the joy of the open road and getting from A to B, from home to college or down to the rock festival for free.

A lot of the best hitching spots — like laybys just after roundabouts — have long since disappeared in road improvement schemes but there must still be a few good ones around. Any recommendations? 

Do you think hitching could ever come back? Would you be prepared to offer a ride?