Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can break the economy...

So here we are - January 2010. Or as an alternative dating might put it: five months to the General Election and counting!

That's assuming of course that Gordon Brown's little faux pas on The Andrew Marr Show last Sunday was for real. Not his attempt to walk across the shot after the interview - rapidly becoming one of the Premier's trademark moves - but his seeming admission that there would be another Budget before the election. That, according to Whitehall pundits, can only mean May 6th for a trip to the polls.

Or at least for the first of our trips to the polls. Given the current up and down nature of the opinion polls, a hung Parliament or a governing party with a very small majority, something that probably wouldn't be workable given the nature of the tough decisions that are going to have to be taken over the rest of this year as CFOs talk up their fears of a double dip recession.

Meanwhile the phoney war has begun in earnest. The war of words between Labour and Conservative spokespeople this week alone gives clear indication that the invective will fly this time around. It's good news for Vince Cable of the Lib Dems who can pull off his chosen role as the voice of reason with consumate ease while George Osborne tears strips off Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown swings his iron fist in David Cameron's general  direction.

But for the rest of us, we face the prospect of nearly six months of tit for tat name calling, claims and counter claims and no doubt - perish the thought - some down right blatant misrepresentations and falsehoods. Hold on tight - it's going to be an incredibly bumpy ride.

At the best of times all this might be grist to the mill. But as a fragile recovery seems to pop its head over the horizon, it would be good to think that eyes are not being taken off important balls at this most critical of junctures. Alas, Alistair Darling's people seem to have spent a large part of their Xmas break composing a treatise on the Tory tax plans, plans whose details to date would struggle to fill an A4 sheet of paper. Not, we might suggest, the most fruitful use of anyone's time.

Meanwhile the UK economy takes a £2 billion bump through the inabilty of the Icelandic President to locate his own spine in the face of a domestic rebellion from his electorate over paying back the bail out that the UK and the Netherlands dipped into their already emptying national pockets to prop up the Icelandic economy! Darling has been talking tough, well tough in terms of diplomatic language anyway. It would be good to think that he'll devote as much attention to addressing this very real problem as he does to deconstructing the Tories presumed tax plans.

It's going to be a long, long five months...