Recession? What recession?

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Gulf News is weighing in at something like (don't forget I'm using a Dhs19 scales from Lal's, so I can't really do the old atomic level measurements here) 540g these days, down from 1.3 Kg in November 2008 - and also down from the 640g-odd that it had sort of settled down to in February.

It peaks and troughs a bit, but it's been steadily trending down - the majority of the loss has, of course, been in the enormous volumes of clamorous and directive real estate advertising that last year was telling us to 'Live your dreams' and 'Dare to drivel' and whatnot.

At the same time, Al Nisr Publishing's Property Weekly (Al Nisr is GN's parent company) has dropped again from 72 pages to 66 - from a high of over 144 pages last year.

I take no pleasure in recording this. I have pals at Gulf News & PW and the newspaper has been my constant companion in over 15 years' living in the UAE. I'm rather fond of it, in a strange way.

But it's interesting, perhaps, for those who thought the worst was over in Jan/Feb and that we'd bottomed with the great Q1 shock, to see that the market's still losing value and that real estate advertising (and, arguably, advertising across the board) continues to shrink.

Disclaimer. This article is in no way intended to damage the economy or indeed to provoke any other economic affect beyond a mild look of passing interest between dunking the first and second Rich Tea biscuit in one's morning tea. No acarpi were harmed in the production of this post.