Businesses like my own, from all across the UK, will tell you that while 2012 was a more positive year than those before it, there remains a demand deficit - there are simply not enough customers walking through the door.

We will never find true happiness through GDP growth alone. To love and be loved - is what ultimately sustains us; all spiritual traditions tell us so and humanists would agree.

The fact that the UK economy is officially expanding can only be good news for wider confidence, but the reality is that the numbers once again included many caveats, and a warning that the underlying condition of the economy is nothing like as robust as the headline figure suggests.

It is time we saw the India and China examples for what they are - a cynical and ruthless attempt to cheat us of our fundamental rights in the name of economic growth.

Yet, as the lights came down on the final day of the 'greatest show on earth', I was left asking the uncomfortable question - what next for this great nation?

The Bank of England revised down its growth forecast for 2012 to virtually zero last week, reinforcing the raft of weak economic data released recently. The UK economy has now contracted in 5 out of the last 7 quarters and net growth since the end of the recession in 2009 has been negligible.

Oh, the glee on the faces of Labour Ministers as the growth figures came in at 0.2% on Tuesday. How they gloated and tried to hold a "more in sorrow than in anger" line, while dancing the fandango on the fractional number.

The Chancellor should have built upon the solid 1.2% second quarter growth he inherited from Labour last year. Instead he is cutting too far and too fast - hitting families, costing jobs and making it much harder to get the deficit down. We're already borrowing £46 billion more than was expected this year.

For a Prime Minster who promised to 'get the economy moving again' today's GDP figures must be deeply worrying. They reveal growth of just 0.2% in the second quarter of 2011. Today we've heard the additional bank holiday due to the royal wedding, the wedding itself and the warm weather in April all being held up as reasons for this poor performance. Not so long ago, the Chancellor of the Exchequer came to the House of Commons and blamed the winter snow for Britain's shock plunge into negative growth at the end of 2010.

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The solution to this quagmire is simple. The state needs to put its dummy back into the pram, and increase capital expenditure on infrastructural projects including affordable housing.