To be fair the last quaters growth was actually revised upwards rather than downwards from the prelimerary figure so it can go up or down and can actually be revised as much as 10 years later.
Im not an economist so dont know the ins and outs of throwing money at it and its effectiveness but I think a lot of the other countires actually had sharper falls in output over a shorter period of time which means they bounce back quicker and sharper but the cost in unemployment and its social effects is higher. Also we are one of the main financial centres in the world and that must have had a knock on effect due to the banking crisis. We saw what happened in America when Bush let the big banks go down and we could not repeat it here.
It is not the cards you are dealt but what you do with them that counts