His central heart valve was leaking and he was taken to a hospital 500 yards away.

BBC: Stoke City legend Terry Conroy recovers from surgery

That's partly because Britain's labour and product markets are more flexible than many of its neighbours': the labour market has a safety valve in the form of the 1m workers who arrived from central and eastern Europe over the past four years and are now beginning to go home.

ECONOMIST: Britain's economy