Robert Houston, the new global boss of ING Real Estate Investment Management, likens our situation to being in an aeroplane that is going through the clouds. At some stage it will re-emerge into blue sky. The uncertainty for us, the passengers, is knowing quite when.

While reading Jeremy Clarkson’s ‘Born to be Riled’ last night, I was amused to read the following:

‘As the 1980s drew to a close, Britain was gripped by a recession which would see car sales fall from 2.2 million a year to just over 1.5 million. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs. Factories closed. House prices plummeted. So did hemlines. It was all horrid. Throughout those dark and gloomy days, gurus told us that the glorious times of easy credit and avarice were over and that in the 1990s we would all be busy gathering wood for pensioners and helping to set up community service projects.

‘But, thankfully, the British recession has ended and those old values are back on line. Girls who had been forced into long and tedious skirts now insist on huge slits up to their ladies’ areas, estate agents are selling houses in Chelsea for £25m, the stock market is up above the ionosphere. Greed is good. And greed is back. Phew.’

Sound familiar? Substitute ‘1980s’ for 2008 and ‘1990s’ for 2010s and Clarkson could be writing about today’s dismal market conditions’

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