Me personally, hands down I'd be off to the armed forces. I could do so much better with a degree, but lets face it, being independent away from home, keeping fit, making new friends and getting paid for the priviledge? Sounds good to me. I regard that option as high as any university place.
You seem slightly worried about this, but there is always Clearing, which many people use to their advantage to secure a good university place. However, if worse comes to worst, a trade wouldn't necessarily be bad thing - especially going into a recession.
As I said to one of my friends who studies Car Mechanics at college: It's all very well complaining you have to get down and dirty underneath a car, and your prospects don't seem amazing, but at the end of the day, if my car breaks down, no amount of A Level Further Maths or A Level Accounting is going to fix that!
Trades are great, especially in hard times like this. To be honest, it doesn't look amazingly productive to be an academic right now!