I pass on this little anecdote for no other reason than it illustrates, yet again, how the economic collapse is affecting ordinary people in the country.
Having a chat with some parents at the U12s rugby training session last evening one of the mums was describing a homework project that her son had been given. The objective was to plan a new by-pass around Chesterfield and it involved carrying out a traffic survey of a short stretch ring road that was built in the 1970s. The lack of "white van" traffic was most notable.
My builder friend confirmed that he had noticed the same phenomenon: on the previous Monday morning he had called into a normally busy builders' merchants to find he was the only customer.
We are only at the start, I fear, of a major and prolonged recession that will devastate parts of our economy for many years.
