Talking Shop: We're all players in the blame game

Rebecca Oakley is a partner at womenswear indie Anne Furbank, which has stores in Buckden in Cambridgeshire and Newmarket in Suffolk

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I know we are looming on the edge of recession but we can't just blame the government and the banks for this, we as individuals have to take a certain amount of responsibility too.

I have to be thankful to the banks for lending me the money to start my business and then develop it. Personally, I have stretched myself to buy a house with a mortgage that is much higher than what was available in my parents' day. 

But I was prepared to take that risk. I may have been helped to do so, but ultimately it was me who made the decision. At our two stores we run a wardrobe account, which means thatcustomers have credit with us. I take that responsibility very seriously, but I have learnt the hard way that offering endless credit to individuals is not always in the best interests of either party. I have a responsibility to each individual as well as them having their own responsibility.

This is a hard lesson to learn when we are talking about a country as a whole and the number of individuals hit by the downturn, some of whom have lost their life savings.
But I hope we will all learn from this, as individuals and as large corporations, from the government to the banks to the relentlessly gloomy media.
In the meantime, thank you to Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, for at least a week of respite from newspapers filled with recession talk.

And if only the media, now they have talked everyone into a depression, could start talking everyone back out of it.

Rebecca Oakley is a partner at womenswear indie Anne Furbank, which has stores in Buckden in Cambridgeshire and Newmarket in Suffolk