What's this business you speak of?

I do like Lord Digby Jones for his enthusiasm for business and highlighting the basic point: you want public services paid for? Then you need business.

I watched his interview on HardTalk from March this year. Blaming the media for reporting doom and gloom goes a bit far. There is this horrid balance to strike for the media. Sure, you've got to allow for confidence to return to the economy, but you've also got to stamp on any bullshit attempted to be spun out and distributed by the Downing Street propaganda mill.

Not a criticism of Labour in this instance; you can bet your meet seat that the next administration will be doing little different. That is just the fundamentals that apply with the current political system.

Lets just be careful when he talks about business and public anger. That's not business, that's banks. Companies collapsed during the boom time, that's widely accepted as just what happens. It's important that failing businesses are allowed to fail; it tells you that they are no good or not needed. The fact that we built up a framework where banks are not allowed to fail is the main cause of the furore. Nature is not allowed to take its course.

That is what destroys confidence. When people are allowed to make huge mistakes and everyone suffers except the perpetrators then confidence will remain shattered. It will rebuild when we can trust that the fall out of risk is felt by the persons taking the risk not the nation.

The expression "too big to fail" must not be allowed to surface again. That's what competition law and regulation exists for. As yet I haven't seen any movement that will prevent privatisation of profits and socialisation of risk when this correction (recession, you may call it) passes into memory.