Presumably, then, to many of those who’ve commented on yesterday’s post and to NEF and others, today’s confirmation of UK 2010 Q4 economic contraction is good news (the graph is from ONS data).
Even if we ignore the facts of the matter, the politics of arguing against growth when there isn’t any are Canute-like.
andrewpendleton
chilesl
Matthew Lockwood
Political Climate 
The debate about whether we can achieve sustainability within the current growth paradigm is complicated but I would suggest that there is a big difference in ‘no growth’ in an economy that is built around the need for growth, and rethinking the economy more fundamentally so that it’s ‘success’ is not predicated on economic growth. Clearly the former is a bad thing in terms of the impacts that it has on people’s lives. That does nor mean that ‘no growth’ in the latter is also necessarily negative.