Here's a couple of stories to ponder, while we consider whether we are in the middle of a recession, economic blip or dead-cat bounce...

• According to The Times newspaper (in a report by Jill Sherman, Richard Ford and Frances Gibb)... there is a memo floating around the UK's Ministry of Justice (aka the old Lord Chancellor's Department) proposing that the department can save £49.3 million by cancelling an electronic filing and document management system intended to cut paperwork and manage cases in the family and civil courts. (This would be the same case & document management system the courts have been waiting for since the 'Woolf' civil justice procedural reforms were first mooted in the mid-1990s.)

• And, according to the research consultancy Gartner... global IT spending will drop in 2009, with hardware sales down 4%, telecoms growing by 3.9% and software increasing by a mere 8.6%, compared with a 13.5% increase this year. IT spending in North America will climb a by 0.5% compared to a previous forecast of 5.3%, Asia Pacific will see IT spending increase by 8.3%, down from an earlier 11% growth prediction, and in Western Europe IT spending will drop 0.8% – whereas Garner had previously forecast spending to grow 2.8% in this region.