THE phrase "economy, economy, economy" doesn't quite have the same virtuous ring to it as "education, education, education", but the economy is the hot issue at the moment.

As one economist put it: "Even if you manage to escape the credit crunch, you will not be able to escape the economic carnage that will follow." The end is nigh and all that, right?

I remember learning about Friedman economics when I was a little lad. There was something about "economic elasticity". The more you pump credit into an economy, the more it will stretch (the rubber band effect), but eventually it will snap. Well, over the last few years, it has truly been stretched, and now it appears to have snapped.

Apparently, the solution to this crisis is to use a bit of glue to bring the two ends of the snapped rubber band together and keep stretching it.

Except on this occasion, the world's governments are pouring taxpayers' money into failed banks in a "non-binding, non-coercive" effort to persuade them to lend more capital to the people who can probably least afford it. This in turn encourages people to spend some of that borrowed money and put it back into an economy that so desperately needs an injection of capital at the moment.

Flawed logic? Is that rubber band not likely to snap again, within a much shorter time period? But, hey, I'm no economic specialist. Surely the experts know what they are doing, right? I mean, it's not just about the here and now, is it?

But, regardless of how we manage the credit crunch, there is no escaping the simple fact that a recession is steaming towards us. Some of the experts say that it's already begun.

In the West, in a recession, some nasty things begin to happen. When there is less to go around, we are far less willing to share it. As a society, we become less tolerant of others.

Already, the focus is shifting towards immigration. Despite the fact that there is a shortage of skilled labour in the UK, meaning we need to bring it in from elsewhere, Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, could not resist jumping on the bandwagon to point the finger at the "thorny issue" of immigration during a recession.

He might be right. I'm not disputing the simple fact that all countries, including Britain, need to have responsible immigration policies, but to highlight the issue in this specific context is pandering to the lowest common denominator and reinforcing the intolerant chorus of "they are taking our jobs".

However, immigrants need to be aware of their responsibilities, too. Last week, two Muslim Royal Mail employees, who could not speak English, failed in their bid for compensation because they were refused extra breaks for prayers.

Frankly, they were just trying it on. I applaud the fact that they failed. It was a victory for common sense. They should have been made to pay costs, too. As the Royal Mail made clear, they had plenty of time to pray during the normal, scheduled breaks.

But stories like this make my job, as a community advocate, that much harder. Nobody, least of all anyone in my community, wants to have any special rights above anyone else. We just want to be treated the same.