I, for one, can’t pretend to be scared.

Yes, house prices are tumbling and people are losing jobs.

And yes, even the middle classes are affected (they can’t afford to go skiing or eat at Strada quite as often).

But common sense tells me it’s a good thing. This has to happen. And does money and saving and assets really matter that much, anyway?

The fact is, our economic system is lunatic and suicidal, and it deserves to go down.

It’s built on the myth that unlimited shoes, bags, cars, ready meals – you name it - are a possibility on a planet of limited resources.

Anyone intelligent could have told you a mighty storm was brewing. Michael Foot tried his best in the midst of an economic crisis in 1976 when, at the Labour party conference, he insisted that: "We face an economic typhoon of unparalleled ferocity, the worst the world has seen since the 1930s.”

He then called for 'socialist imagination'

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I don't know about that.

It is, of course, more than just a mirror on our society, but the way it changes us is surely two-way: we are symbiotically linked to our trusty square friend.

This is why I think The Family, the new eight-part fly-on-the-wall series from Channel 4, is so fascinating.

It acts like a comfort blanket because it continually tells us things we already know, but quite like to be reminded of. We see ourselves in members of The Family, as they sit around the TV night after night, wincing as the door slams and the eldest remaining daughter strides out in boots and a boob tube, into the night.

Truisms and clichés abound ...and yet this is compelling stuff.

We are told, for instance, that parents worry desperately for their chi

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For that reason this time of year - London Fashion Week - always leaves me diving for cover.

Yes, I am a diary journalist and my job is to report on social events. No, I do not fancy sipping champagne with the hat wearing, air-kissing mafia. Fashion, to me, is the joke that takes itself seriously.

It's the Emporer's new clothes and his ghastly, obsequious weavers. It's designers waxing lyrical about 'meaning' and 'philosophy' behind such inane items as shoes and bags. It's supermodels and pointless blog posts.

Doing some "research" for this little rant I have just come across Erin O'Connor's blog entitled, in all seriousness: "LFW Wardrobe: Day One".

The so-called "super intelligent" clothes horse proceeds to give a detailed account of that day's ever-so crucial wardrobe selection.

"Monday morning; I decided on a Jaeger coat, belt and bag, teamed with Yohji Yamamoto trousers, a Phillip Lim blouse and YSL shoes," she writes... in earnest.

With this attention to

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My own masochistic impulses kicked in when Channel 4's Super Botox Me appeared on the television and - despite my squeamishness and moral objections to such ridiculous TV formats - I stayed glued.

There was something sickly fascinating about watching a so-called headstrong, intelligent young woman journalist go headfirst into a blood-splattered blitz of cosmetic surgery, driven solely by her tragic levels of self loathing.

My civilised Sunday evening soon turned into a sorry, gruesome gore fest that left me screaming at the telly in frustration. Jeez.

How stupid some women can be. I already have a niggling disdain for these supposed social reporters who end up trying out the very things they are supposed to be investigating, as if it somehow adds to the authenticity of the project.

Remember cutesy former pop singer turned WAG Louise Redknapp, who starved herself for five weeks for a similar show, ITV1's The Truth About Size Zero, in the earnest belief she had a moral duty to live, breathe and sleep the anorexic's nightmare?

She wa

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