The Prophet Of Doom? Yes and no.

About a year and a half ago a Labour Minister, who I believe was the Transport Secretary at the time, wrote in his blog that we should all stop being so miserable and should be thankful that we are as well off as we are. This was a subject of debate on the Victoria Derbyshire phone-in on Radio Five Live: some people agreed but most were of the opinion that we had every right to be gloomy about our future prospects.

I was a caller on that show and I said in not so few words that we were at the mercy of the banks. They had created a bubble in the housing market that meant that more and more of our income was being spent on housing, creating more and more profits for the banks.

Within six months it started to come crashing down with the collapse of Lehman Bros. Even one year on from massive government bailouts, guarantees etc there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

The only industries that have been significant success stories in the last ten years have been financial services and banking. Now, the common man is too worried to go near these with a barge-pole. The export gravy train has largely dried up as there are no investments being made in emerging markets, nor do we have any other resources to sell to the world. Obviously the manufacturing industries that we had are much less significant than they were. We're going to be stuck with a weakening currency and we'll be significantly worse off financially. It looks as though the only thing that is going to push up GDP in the next few years will be inflation.

It all sounds really bad, but is there a silver lining?

The long answer is really quite long, but the short answer is this: yes, if we realise that economic growth and GDP per capita are not good goals at which to aim.

We use them as targets largely because we don't know better. Also, they are measurable. Governments like to set targets and then go to the electorate and say "Look. We set this target and we achieved it. Vote us in again and we can all live happily ever after!"

But it's not going to work like that, because they're the wrong targets. We need to move the goalposts; start shooting at different targets.

First target: HAPPINESS- if you're not happy you might as well not be here.
Second target: HEALTH - if you are happy, let's keep it going as long as possible.