Am I the only one who thinks this reliance on construction is severly limiting for our economy ? I'm not sure if other economies rely on 'construction' to the same degree, but it seems crazy that our economy is doing well because all the builders are busy building new houses (at a rate that many people believed for a long time was unsustainable) and extensions, and buying all their big 4*4s and super-sized mansions in the country and keeping the economy afloat with their expenditure. As soon as demand slows down (because, among other things, the builders and developers were extracting super-profits because the level of demand supported it) the industry seems to be in crisis and it appears the rest of the economy starts slowing down.
I'm no economist (well, I am techinically, but last time I did Economics was almost 20 years ago in college) but I think any government that allows the economy to develop such a heavy dependence on an industry like this is pretty foolhardy. I'm not saying they should have stopped the builders from building, but there should have been a little more development of other industries.
z