The government, the Treasury and Osborne most certainly are.
Osborne spent several minutes of his response to questions about the 2010 Q4 figures pointing out that the 0.5% contraction was, according to the ONS, due to the bad weather. The suggestion was that this was postponed activity rather than lost activity.
Therefore, it may be sensible, in this case, to look at the two quarters' figures (the one with the postponed activity and the following period where one would expect the postponed activity to take place) together. Or maybe we need to take a 4 quarter view as the excuses for Q2 are already in the bank: