Isn’t it about time we put the current economic problems into a bit of perspective ?
Look around the cities and towns of the North East and there has been major developments and unprecedented growth.
Most people these days have one or two cars, live in centrally heated, doubled glazed houses with satellite or cable TV - with a television in every room - along with computers and many people have regular holidays abroad.
Not so long anyone who had access to all that would be considered pretty well off. Now these things are considered commonplace.
Now if some people can only have one foreign holiday every six months or isn’t able to have a new car each year they imagine they are in someway deprived.
And this is when the whingers really come out from under their stones.
And the easiest target for all this whinging is the Labour government, especially for the pro-Tory elements of the national media which has undue influence for so many people in the UK.
Lets get real, not so long ago most people in this region worked in poorly paid jobs, had one telly and were lucky if they travelled abroad once or twice in their entire lives.
The current economic slowdown is a product of the capitalist system which will always have peaks and troughs, and is not the fault of the current Labour government.
We should be counting our blessings that we were born British that we live in a country which is both rich and served by an established and stable democratic system.
And a country in which the NHS will save your life without checking to see if you have enough money in the bank to make sure you can afford to pay for medical treatment first.
A country which has courageous and professional armed forces which puts itself at the service of Britain and does not think the country should be at the service of the armed forces.
I am sure the citizens of Zimbabwe would swap places in a heartbeat, they know what it is really is like to live in a country with genuine poverty ,rampant inflation and widespread lawlessness.