You can’t actually joke any more that the UK is the ‘sick man of Europe’, as there’s now a handful of us: as reported recently. Spain has become the latest European country to slip into recession joining the Belgium, Cyprus, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. ‘Sick man’ jokes are best avoided as the UK hurtles towards privatisating its NHS, a policy which nobody had actually voted for in the UK general election in 2010. Our ‘Lonesome George’ is going an incredibly slow rate because of an economic policy of entirely his own making; he is pursuing, without acknowledging failure, a disastrous policy which has never been shown to work. Many voters can’t wait to show them their complete contempt for a policy which has seen Osborne and Cameron pit the public sector against the private sector, both extremely valuable parts of the UK economy, with the disadvantaged including disabled citizens sidelined and even feeling victimised. Meanwhile, many people have got away completely unaffected, with even some tangible improvements in policy (such as lowering the top tax rate of income tax).

Of course, the deeply tragic news is the death of ‘Lonesome George’. This is an extract from a very nice tribute which has just been published on the online Guardian.

“He was on Ecuador‘s bank notes and stamps, an evolutionary remnant, a money-spinning tourist attraction and an icon of internationalconservation. No one knew if he was gay, impotent, bored or just very shy. But he is thought to have been about 100 years old and in his prime when he died on Sunday at the Charles Darwin research centre in the Galápagos Islands, although the giant tortoise known as Lonesome George and commonly called the “rarest animal on Earth” may in fact have been far older – or much younger.”

‘Lonesome George’ is dead, and may George rest-in-peace. Osborne’s economic policy is also dead, only kept alive as an emergency measure with artificial life-support from the BBC. It doesn’t take a person with an economic degree to work out how No. 10 generated this domestic recession. Oh yes, I genuinely forgot just then that Osborne does not have an economics degree. I’d be surprised even if he studied it for GCSEs which Michael Gove intends to scrap anyway.

Here’s an overview of how George Osborne, “strategic mastermind” (LMAO ROFL), created a recession when the UK was in growth when the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats did not win the election but came into government together.