DON’T be fooled. The Government is trying to persuade us it has found new resources to stimulate the economy, but it hasn’t.

Yes, the spending announced this week may help some of the more hard-pressed sectors of the economy, such as the housebuilding industry, but its overall macro-economic effect will be negligible.

In any case, what is the point of helping housebuilders if it’s done at the expense of, for example, the shipbuilding industry? That’s what could happen with this Government’s policy of robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are plenty of rumours around at the moment that the two aircraft carriers earmarked for the Royal Navy face being scrapped in order to save money.

Economically, that wouldn’t make much sense. Militarily, it’s pretty daft, too. It was a newly-elected Labour government that, some 12 years ago, announced plans for the 60,000-tonne vessels in the belief that, in the modern era, Britain needed highly mobile expeditionary forces to fight wars around the world. Look where British forces are, or have recently been, engaged. This mobile strategy is still valid.

But that’s where fundamental economic mismanagement gets you. Spending policies adapted to the volatility of short-term cycles can serve to store up trouble in the long term.

What we need is a new Government post that takes the longer view. We need a minister for long-term prosperity, somebody who won’t duck the big issues, like the Chancellor did in the last Budget.

We need, somehow, to build stability into the economic life of the nation. The ambition should be to build equilibrium into key sectors such as the housing market and bank lending. Rapidly rising house prices, followed by rapid falls, is no good to anybody.

But I suspect demanding economic equilibrium is easier said than done.

TALK of new bidders for General Motors Europe entering the fray at this point in time should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Canadian car parts supplier Magna appeared to be the preferred bidder, but now Belgium’s RHJ International and China’s Beijing Automotive Industry Corp are supposedly back in the frame.

This is an obvious negotiating ploy by cash- strapped General Motors, who are trying to talk the price up.

The odd thing is that the American company restricted its talks to Magna in the first place. Who knows what geo- political machinations lie behind these latest developments.

There is a lot to be said for having China’s interests so tied into those of the West, as they would be if they owned a European car maker.

However things turn out, it’s clearly good news for the local workforce at Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port plant that there is so much interest in investing in the business’s future.

RETAIL rents in Liverpool are 15.6% down on last year, according to Colliers CRE’s latest survey.

That’s hardly a surprise, given the recession and the fact that the supply of shop space in the city centre has risen sharply. In the aftermath of the opening of Liverpool One, and all the reshuffling of retail tenants that ensued, there is a significant overhang of what has always been considered Zone A space.