Do you (or any other readers) know of any good analyses of current UAE internal politics, wouldn’t mind reading up on it. Thanks in advance.

What planet are you on?! A default on UK debt – or merely the slightest perception by the markets that one might occur in the distant future – would cause a collapse in sterling. For a country that has to important practically everything, including almost all of its food, fuel and essential goods this mean a catastrophic drop in living standards for ordinary people overnight.

So if the “prestigious” commentators made a mistake it was to do with the internal politics of the UAE, nothing to do with the economics.

Less pedantic point: there are an enormous number of ways in which Britain’s poor can stave off the baliffs if they’re in a similar situation. Pretty much everyone who ends up with the telly carted off and the locks changed could have avoided it if they’d known about the assorted ways of escaping/rescheduling/writing down etc debt agreements.

If anyone reading this has debt problems, then go to the Citizens Advice Bureau right away, and you’ll most likely escape with your things intact. If you ignore the problem and hope it’ll go away, only then are you likely to have Very Bad Things happen.