Reading all the doom and gloom from the economic experts makes me want to hibernate somewhere and wait until 2009.

It always bothers me when bosses and trade unions agree on something, and business groups and unions are both predicting a difficult year, so perhaps we've all got to start doing a bit of belt tightening.

Mind you, going around the town centre this new year and seeing the fighting masses clamouring for "bargains", it doesn't look as though the majority have got the message yet.

I wonder how many of those clothes, eagerly bought in the herd instinct to cash in on a bargain, will end up being worn once, then put in a drawer or the wardrobe for a few months and end up in charity shops?

It would be a real challenge for many people to adopt a new way of life – to buy something only when it is "needed" rather than when it is "wanted" or just because it is there.

In this consumer age we want something all the time, but there is precious little that we really need.
Yes, we might want a million dollar home, another in a tropical paradise, have a few luxury cars dotted around, and replace the three-piece suite when it gets the first knock, but we certainly don't "need" any of them.

Currently, Britain has twin problems of rising fuel and food prices driving up inflation (now above target and rising) and a weakening economy. The Bank of England traditionally jacks up interest rates to dampen inflation or reduces interest rates to boost the economy.

The Bank now has a seemingly impossible tightrope to tread to balance these two opposites.

I've always felt that controlling the nation's economy by juggling interest rates is both cruel and obscene.

If you increase interest rates, all you do is make people who are borrowing money pay more and the people who gain are those who have money.
In other words you take from the poor to give more to the rich.
Far fairer would be to increase taxes which proportionately make the rich pay more than the poor.
Unfortunately, with the government we have, if it had extra money all that would happen is that it would spend it by increasing public spending; give in to excessive pay demands from public sector workers and the economy would take another downward spiral.

If, instead, cash taken in the "bad" times to fight inflation was used to offset debt, Britain's economic prospects would prosper.

What is worrying is that Britain's manufacturing, which put the "Great" into Britain, has bled through cuts from thousands of knives.

We used to make so much and export it all around the world. What's holding the economy up now? Hot air?

Very little seems to be made here but a lot seems to be bought. Millions are in jobs that service others, who service others, who service others, in a big circle of nothingness.

The population is addicted to the concept of easy money – profit from the house, the lottery, shares, currency speculation, everything other than fair pay for fair work.

Eventually, it has to come crashing down. Gloomy stuff!

Did you, like me, suffer from the dreaded bugs this Christmas and New Year. These viruses that have been doing the rounds are awful, seem to linger for so long afterwards, and make you feel rotten.

But as bad as the bugs currently doing the rounds are, they are only minor germs. It made me think how bad it would be if a bird flu pandemic took hold.

More worrying still is global warming. Oh yes, we have just had a cold snap, but the planet, overall, is warming up.

On my visits to the town centre many shops still have their doors wide open, heaters on full blast, costing a fortune and doing nothing to help the planet.

The biggest culprits are women's clothes shops. Do they really think that if they had their doors shut people wouldn't go inside?

I wish people (and women in particular) would boycott these shops until they were more responsible.

I hoped that 2008 would start with a new year resolution for people to show more good will to each other.

It wasn't long before that hope was dashed. I was walking in Chapel Road, Worthing, near the raised spot across the road near the Guildbourne Centre and watched a woman with a child in a pushchair walk straight into the road in front of a bus travelling south.

A woman next to her shouted "watch out, there's a bus coming." Her reply: The bus driver's going too f**** fast, that will make him slow the f*** down won't it?"

Happy new year!