UK fin min George Osborne speaking ahead of this week's Budget.

Writing in the Sun on Sunday he says:

"As I prepare to deliver my eighth Budget this week, I want to be straight with you.

Recently, I've talked of a dangerous cocktail of risks. They include a slowdown in China, a country that helped power global growth through the crisis.

There was the fall in oil and commodity prices, interest rate changes elsewhere in the world, political instability in the Middle East. Indeed it's been the worst start to a year on stock markets for almost half a century.

Many emerging countries are struggling and many of the other advanced economies of the West are stuck in the doldrums. In short, the hopes of a stronger global recovery have evaporated. Instead the world economy is slowing."

Osborne is obviously keen to blame others ( he's a politician after all) and no doubt there will be more of the same when he stands up in parliament to deliver his latest Budget this Wednesday. The events are not normally market movers but we'll bring you any headlines of note.

Expect a few more public spending cuts as outlined on the BBC's Andrew Marr show this morning when Osborne warned that the UK has to "act now rather than pay later." He said the cuts would be "equivalent to 50p in every £100" of public spending by 2020, which was "not a huge amount in the scheme of things".He told Marr that the world was "more uncertain" than at any time since the financial crisis.

More from the Beeb here

George " Slasher" Osborne gets ready to wield the axe again.