THE "Do Something" lobby, furiously urging the government and/or the Bank of England to do more to lubricate financial markets and fend off consequential damage to the real economy, will not garner much momentum from the latest pointers to economic activity and price inflation across Britain.

If ever three pieces of disparate data, delivered over 48 hours, were designed to perplex policymakers and lobbyists alike, it would be difficult to beat this trio. The rates dilemma facing the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee looked agonising, even before this week began. Now it looks excruciating.

Those who, after last week's latest quarter-point cut to 5%, were bullishly talking of UK rates being down to 4% by this year end and as low as 3.5% in 2009, before this cycle turns, may have to think again. You couldn't make up a set of numbers better designed to expose the MPC's balancing act for the high-wire dilemma it has become.

First, the latest PMI Scotland report for Royal Bank of Scotland, released over the weekend, pointed to growth in Scotland's private sector at its weakest since July 2003. Fifty-eight months of steady expansion could soon be at an end.

Businesses north of the border are also reporting "intense inflationary pressure", with input prices at their highest in more than 10 years and output price inflation also hitting levels not seen since that data became available in January 2000.

On a UK-wide scale, these producer price pressures were reinforced yesterday, when the latest National Statistics data showed factory gate prices rising at their fastest rate since 1991, thanks to input costs recording their strongest increase since records began in 1986.

However, that confirmation of a worrying inflation outlook was accompanied by unexpectedly poor retail sales data from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG showing a sharp 1.6% fall in March, on a like-for-like basis.

Homewares and furniture continued to take a hit, reflecting the downturn in the UK housing market. But clothing and footwear sales turned in their worst performance for more than eight years and even food sales slowed.

All in all, it was the worst performance for nearly three years. That earlier downturn, in July 2005, was blamed on unseasonably wet summer weather.

This time, with the unfolding credit crisis and daily headlines about widespread turmoil in the mortgage market, slowing activity across the nation's shopping malls points to an altogether more intractable malaise.

Against this stark backdrop how, one wonders, can the MPC fulfil its primary mission to contain UK inflation while doing all it can to sustain a decade and a half of continuous growth? And what of a government which is helping to stoke producer prices by raising tax on tobacco and alcohol?

What now is the trade-off between stable prices on the one hand and ever-higher expectations of prosperity on the other? One or other will surely have to give, at least in the short to medium term.

So, what's it to be? Stable prices? Or a hiccup - or worse - on growth?

On one thing most people seem to agree - governments and central banks must do something at times like this. According to yesterday's cross-country poll in the Financial Times, 61% of people in Britain think government and/or the Bank should be intervening to help commercial banks hit by the current financial crisis.

That's rather higher than France (52%), Germany (52%) or the United States (49%), but lower than interventionist sentiment in Italy (68%) or Spain (72%). However, despite that majority backing for action, this same sample is less than sanguine about what might be delivered.

An overwhelming 68% of the British sample is "not confident at all" in the government's ability to deal with recent economic difficulties. That's way worse than all the others. The next highest is Germany, at 52%.

Yet there's a conundrum here. Only Germany scores lower on the percentage reporting the crisis has had a major or moderate impact on daily life. In the British sample only 23% said yes to that. And while more than a third expect their own financial position to worsen over the next year, more than half still think it will at least remain the same, if not improve.

Nor is there much appetite for embracing other ways of doing things. Some 46% of the sample think our economic performance would be worse if we were already part of the eurozone. And 44% believe EU membership is already hurting us.

Even if the prevailing mindset is for the authorities to do more to steer us through this crisis, even if there's little belief that this government will deliver, the sense of personal panic appears relatively contained for now and the obvious strategic alternative - throwing our lot in with the eurozone - enjoys scant public support.

So there's still plenty for Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling to play for.

That said, as the MPC wrestles with its response to the competing threats on growth and prices, it is not at all clear this prime minister and his chancellor have enough time on their side.