Statements of Intent...

Well, the stock markets haven't plunged following George Osborne's autumn statement - public sector unemployment up, growth expectations down.

Nor did they plummet upon the latest forecast of doom from the OECD, on the contrary, they zoomed upwards.

I know that stock markets are far from the measure of real economic activity - Omaha billionaire investor Warren Buffett prefers to look at a company's long-term performance rather than short-term fluctuations on the DOW's temperature chart - but they are sympomatic of mood and confidence.

So what are we to make of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development's prediction of recession? Being a bear of astonishingly little brain - if I had any I would long ago have found a comfy niche on a European quango such as the OECD - I can only ask a rhetorical question: What does the OECD actually make; what does it manufacture; what does it trade in to make a real difference to the lives of others?

Having heard Shirley Williams defer to the OECD numerous times over the years, I thought the time had come to find out a bit about it. My source was The Great Deception, Richard North and Christopher Booker's epic chronicle of the history of the European Union. There I discovered, to my disappointment I must say, that the OECD is yet another tentacle of the bloody EU.

This Paris-based branch of the Brussels octopus wets its beak with a budget for this financial year of 342 million euros, of which the UK coughs up £6.3m. Of the other 33 member states, the US lobs in 22.21 million euros, Japan 12.22 million and Germany 8.38 million. At the other end of the scale, Iceland contributes 230,000 euros, Luxembourg 290,000 and Ireland 820,000.

Interestingly, North and Booker describe how this organisation, the brainchild of Jean Monnet, in 1961 supplanted the OEEC, the Organisation of European Economic Co-operation, created in 1948 to distribute American Marshall Plan dollars to war-shattered Europe. The OEEC was intergovernmental whereas the OECD was, is, supragovernmental - just like the EU.

Bearing in mind the bloody mess the EU has come to be, was always likely to be, why should we pay any more mind let alone money to its Paris Org? Tell me, tell me, for the world is surely full Casandras and Pandoras smarter than I am.

Were Mr Osborne to lose his mind and actually ask me what he should do to help revive the country, I would say: No more money for the OECD; no more money for the EU; no more money for climate change and its associated subsidised industries; no more money for bail-outs of banks in corrupt EU states; no more universal benefits of any kind. These measures would of course mean real cuts in borrowing and real cuts in spending, not the reduction in borrowing that has passed for cuts to date.

The corporate state can be comforting, providing you don't ask where the money's coming from. During Labour's 13 years in office, government borrowing and personal debt were like over-inflated hot air balloons. If the OECD warned what would happen when the balloons burst, nobody has reminded me when they did it. I'm probably wrong, but I have a feeling that the world went to hell in a handcart in spite of all the economics brainiacs in Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and London. Indeed, you could argue that it was partly because of them and their pals in the money markets, that the crash happened.

The other part of the "partly" belongs, of course, to Joe Public. Nobody forced them to borrow more than they could afford to repay. Nobody forced them to spend now and perhaps pay back later. Nobody forced them to accept unsolicited offers of gold and platinum credit cards. And the politicians traded on this. They will, if you're fool enough to let them.

'More pain to come!' say the television journos, working up the shock horror. As though symptomatic of our great unexpectations, Harry Ramsden's fish and chip restaurant at Guiseley - between Bradford and Leeds - is to close after a millions years. Quelle surprise! Not really. For the past two or three years or more, wherenever I have passed that place the car-park had more empty spaces than Nicholas Parson's last one-man show. There are better chippies, much better chippes, in Leeds, Skipton, Shipley and Baildon.

Overall, every failing business with, for example, poor man-management practices, low staff morale and indifferent products, will be blaming the down-turn for their declining market share. What a god-send a damn-good depression is for useless managers, crappy politicians, meddling technocrats and policy wonks at the OECD.