Right, first off you can't judge the economy based on stories from your own industries. Though businesses in your various careers might be failing it's generally a bad guide of a country-wide trend. Just to try and illustrate that the economy certainly isn't in recession I've got the FTSE 100 here, which is based on how well the top 100 UK businesses are doing in the stock market.
This is how the FTSE 100 has performed for the past 5 years. Admittedly it is beginning to level out, but beyond that for the past 5 years there has been almost unparalleled growth. Furthermore, even during periods of growth there have been dips like we've been seeing recently. To have a recession you, by definition, need to have a consistent stock market drop for two quarters (six months).
This is the FTSE 100 for the past 3 months. The massive drop is when the tail end of the Northern Rock crisis occurred, you can see the first drop earlier in the 5-year graph. I think we can all agree that this does not display a consistent and determined downward drop - and this is just half of what is needed to define a recession.
If someone can correct me on this then please do, because I cannot see how anyone is prophesising a nationwide economic disaster.