Every day now, another faceless Suit announces that we have officially entered recession. It’s usually accompanied by bleak comparisons to a year, way back before the wheel was invented, when the economy was last in this sorry state.

The more we hear about it, the more we worry. The more we worry, the less we spend. The less we spend the more our economy struggles and then the more we hear about it, and (sounding familiar?) the more we worry and the vicious economic circle spins ever tighter.

The thing is, we’re all painfully aware of our car-crash economy, we don’t need reminding by the day, by the hour even, of the dire implications.

We know because we’re living it, coping with it, eating and sleeping it, gritting our teeth and hoping to come through the other side of it. If and when the other side appears, that is.

So now we all know exactly how bad things are and what those who can, are doing about it – let’s just change the subject shall we?

Of course you could accuse me of committing the very same crime I’m condemning, by talking of recession at all. So this is the last time I will mention the R word, unless it’s good news. I just wish the rest of the world of media could find a way to do the same.

You see, for once I’m not just having an idle whinge. This is important. The most dangerous thing we can do in these times is to talk-up the downturn. Humans are cautious creatures, we group together and follow each other’s lead and the last thing our economy needs right now is exactly what’s happening – we’re battening down the hatches of our household budgets, squeezing the profits of businesses large and small to breaking point and beyond.

I realise it would be deeply unfashionable of me to suggest we start reviving our once-famous stiff-upper-lip, but when has that ever bothered me? I was brought up to play-down even the most catastrophic disasters, never easy for the melodramatic, adolescent me, but now I’m older and arguably, wiser, I’m starting to see the point.

So let’s all concentrate on ‘other stuff’ for a while. Instead of feeling powerless and swept away in a rip-tide of recession, seize control of your destiny and do the one thing we can all still do . . . from now on, let’s stop making a song and dance about how bad things are and speculating morbidly on how much worse they’re going to get.

This is one occasion when talking about it just won’t help and if we’re not careful we’ll end up talking ourselves into the jaws of disaster.

By Emma Suddaby