A good thing about the internet is it allows you to check if that vague feeling you had about the lie of the media land is correct. The vague feeling I had – vague because I don’t monitor newspapers – was that there has been a rash of articles about how this recession is not such a bad thing after all. You know: we (not I) had been getting a bit up ourselves, a bit stressed out by shopping. The vague feeling I have is that a crowd of lifestyle journalists have been giving the impression that a recession is like a holiday – welcome respite from the pressures of eating out, going skiing, investing in a second property and all that. So, have I been misled by quickly scanned headlines, snippets of articles read over shoulders on the bus? Not entirely. Here’s Brian O’Connell in the Irish Times (Friday, Sep 26th): “It’s official: the economy’s bust. Look on the bright side – this is a good time to be a customer…” Amazing: booms are good for consumerism but so are slumps.

Of course, the other good thing about the internet is you can also check to see if someone got in there ahead of you:  “I had written a light-hearted piece for the paper today in which I mentioned that a lot of media people seemed to be actually enjoying recession nostalgia and thinking that this latest recession is a good thing, and I open the Sunday Times and, honest to God, two of their main columnists are actually saying that this recession is a good thing.” That’s from Brendan O’Connor, not normally someone I would read, writing way back in July…