Talk of "green shoots" in the economy is perhaps premature, but a more balanced debate about the challenges ahead as the slump deepens can boost confidence and raise prospects

Can you remember the heady days of last year when we were all urged not to talk about recession for fear it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy? I wrote an article in August in which I used the "R word" several times and every mention of it was changed to "downturn". It all seemed rather redolent of the thespian superstition of referring to Macbeth as "The Scottish Play".

In September, Chancellor Alistair Darling's job was judged to be on the line after his comment that Britain could be heading into the worst economic conditions for 60 years.

He was right, of course. And, had other members of the government been more honest in acknowledging the likely length and depth of the financial problems that we were all going to face this year, we might have been better prepared. But the state of collective denial continued until we hit the buffers just after Christmas, when the first big wave of job losses was announced. Did the government think it could, Canute-like, hold back the tide?

In reality, of course, the scale of the global recessionary forces massed against us means that any one remark, positive or negative, and whoever voices it, is like a grain of sand in a vast desert. The suggestion that the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston—who is having a good recession—is responsible for our plight is simply laughable. He merely reflects events and helps to make sense of what is happening.
A little more of the same objectivity on the part of the government wouldn't go amiss. The wild and sudden swing from relentlessly talking things up to resolutely talking them down smacks of pre-electioneering and risk-aversion.

Yes, things are bad, but they are not uniformly bad. Many companies are doing OK, or even very well, helped by the fact that they positioned themselves for a downturn. And there are also some expansionary forces at work: interest rates are at an all-time low, VAT has been cut, exchange rates have fallen and the oil price has collapsed. If these things weren't having a positive effect on the economy we really should be worried.

Therefore, the invective directed at business minister Baroness Vadera in January, for being "out of touch" with the real world after her comments about "green shoots of recovery", seems excessive, particularly as she was referring specifically to the demonstrable recovery in the corporate bond market.

Similarly, housing minister Margaret Beckett has alluded to "anecdotal evidence of a bit of an upturn" in the property market while employment minister Tony McNulty has observed "light at the end of the tunnel" , albeit "some time off".

In October 1991, then chancellor Norman Lamont referred to the "green shoots of economic spring" during a recession. He, too, was lambasted at the time, but statistics now show that a recovery began in the second quarter of 1992. In May 1993, economist Gavyn Davies described Lamont's remarks as "remarkably prescient".

The upbeat comments of Vadera, Beckett and McNulty will, in time, become similarly insightful, because the ups and downs of the economy are part of an inexorable cycle. But there's an outside chance, of course, that Gordon Brown's claim to have ended the days of boom and bust proves correct and we stay in recession for ever.

But we need to be optimistic. We can't talk ourselves out of a slump, just as we didn't talk ourselves into one. But a rather more balanced conversation about the challenges and opportunities facing us, along with a few good-news stories, would help boost our confidence about spending wisely rather than merely battening down all the hatches.

After all, the government's recent interventions have been designed to stimulate individual and corporate spending, but who feels like shelling out on anything when we are constantly being told how bad things are?

Personally, I always feel slightly nervous when things are going well, because there is so much scope for them to go wrong. I feel more comfortable when I am in a slough of despondency because I know that the only way from there is up. Maybe we'd all feel a little more positive if we treated this recession as a boom waiting to happen.