MAIL COMMENT: No glib answers to our economic woes

After the euphoria of the Olympics, Gordon Brown arrived home with a bump on Monday to face the bitter economic realities of credit crunch Britain.

First came a chilling warning from the deputy governor of the Bank of England that the economic crisis could drag on for 'some considerable time'  -  which may mean years, rather than months.

Next, a report showed the average family's disposable income plunged by a massive £2,500 over the past year alone  -  a 15 per cent drop  -  as households suffered the lethal combination of low pay rises and soaring bills for food and fuel.

To put it bluntly, Britain is in a hole  -  and after years of profligate public spending during the good times, the Prime Minister has left himself and the country with no easy way out of it.

The very last thing he should do, as he prepares his long-awaited 'relaunch', is pretend he has a miracle cure.

Nor should he turn to hard-pressed taxpayers  -  present or future  -  to finance glib gimmicks in the hope of shoring up his poll ratings.

What he can  -  and must  -  do, however, is ease the pressures on those hardest hit by the downturn.

Pensioners and poorer families face a winter of real hardship unless they get urgent help with their utility bills.

Motorists, too, need relief from the crippling taxes that add to the burden of soaring fuel price rises.

Meanwhile, everything possible  -  including the much-discussed stamp duty concessions  -  must be done for first-time buyers, whose hopes of getting on to the housing ladder have been dashed by the paralysis in the market.

But Mr Brown will win no votes by claiming he has a magic solution to all our economic woes.

Britons are not that gullible. 

A dangerous liberty

Schizophrenic killer Magdi Elgizouli is so dangerous that police have been warned of the risks of approaching him if they encounter him on patrol.

So why is he on the loose, only ten years after he was locked up indefinitely for murdering WPC Nina Mackay?

Incredibly, he has been granted four hours' leave a week from a secure psychiatric hospital in preparation for his permanent release.

The revelation comes only the day after we learned that the number of violent thugs who escape with a police caution has more than trebled in five years to over 118,000.

Meanwhile, prison overcrowding has become so acute that contingency plans have been drawn up to extend even further the controversial scheme under which 35,000 criminals  -  including 6,000 violent offenders  -  have been freed early.

This Government was elected on a pledge to be 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime'.

Could there be any more scandalous cause of crime than deliberately setting violent criminals free?

Betrayal of trust

Confidential details of more than a million British bank customers have been discovered on a computer flogged on eBay for £35.88.

On the same day, it emerges that more than 3,200 laptops and mobile phones containing sensitive information have been lost or stolen from Government departments since 2001.

The bitter truth is we are all utterly at the mercy of businesses and civil servants who treat our confidential details with criminal carelessness.

When will those responsible stop making excuses and treat data security with the seriousness it demands?