Recession started 3 months earlier

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I seem to remember Gordon Brown banging on about how the Euro zone went into a recession before us.

With yesterday's GDP revision of Q1 2009 seeing a huge revision downwards catching the headlines, I missed the other news that Q2 2008 was also revised downwards from 0%.

On the year, GDP fell 4.9 percent -- the biggest decline on record. The ONS had previously estimated a fall of 4.1 percent. Back data were also revised down, meaning Britain's recession started in the second quarter of 2008, earlier than thought.

This means that the definition of a recession being 2 consecutive -ve quarters of growth was officially confirmed for Q3 2008 a whole 3 months earlier than Gordon Brown claimed.