Tagged: Economics

Over the course of the next week, I am going to explain why I came to my decision to vote to remain in the European Union, in possibly 5 blog posts, separated into distinct chapters. Like many, my mind was made up long before the campaign started – around a year ago for me.  There is plenty that I don’t like about the European Union in terms of how it organises itself so myself voting to leave was possible.  There was a decision for me to make. The most important part of any voting decision for myself is the economy, …

The British honours system doesn’t always get it right.  Fred Goodwin and Jimmy Saville were two that I re-salutated from Sir to Scumbag long before their titles were removed. Mervyn King is another one who needs to be dethroned. There are many who seem to in praise of Mr King, mostly due to his record on taming inflation.  Inflation was indeed a major economic problem for the UK for several decades, however for the first two thirds of Mr King’s reign, it was targeted at 2% and mostly achieved.  Inflation it seemed, had been tamed. But why was this?  Was …

Sadly for those with a crude mind, I am talking economics not something else. You may be aware that we re-entered recession in the last quarter for the second time in recent years, hence the term ‘double dip recession’. I have to admit that I thought we would escape such a scenario with very minor growth of along the lines of 0.1%.  But instead we shrunk by 0.2%. It is far from the end of the world, it is more of a technical recession than anything anyone will notice, but it will reduce confidence and sentiment which are important for …

Sometimes you just have to accept what you have got, and more pertinently what you haven’t got. Especially when you have run out of gold (enfry).

I note that GDP growth for the second quarter of 2011 is only 0.2%. Nobody should be worried about this.  As the below historic graph shows, quarterly GDP growth has always been very volatile.  Just look at the quarters of very low or no growth after the recession in the early 1980’s for an example. There are many dangers out there to the UK economy in the short-term, mostly external such as potential oil price shocks, a US debt default, further problems in the Euro-zone and most likely a default by at least one of the very heavily indebted countries in the …

I thought it only prudent (don’t worry, not in the Gordon Brown sense of the word ‘prudent’) to comment upon the state of the UK economy today, with the release of good news with the quarter on quarter increase in GDP of 0.8%. I am sick of the bashing from the Anti-Tory left-wing of this country already (BBC – you are on notice as my favoured news provider). They are so desperate for power that they will choose any way to attack the government, and talk down the country’s prospects. And don’t even get me started on the politically-motivated unions, …

And welcome to Monday. Great, isn’t it? And to cheer me up, I have discovered evidence that being single is going to cost me £250,000.00 more over my lifetime than it would have done if I were as part of a couple. This is due to the expenses of housing, bills and holidays all being more for a single person than for one person living as part of a couple. Damn it, I thought I was being pretty economically efficient. There I was thinking that I was saving loads of money on subsidising a woman’s shopping habits, not having the …

It seems a while since I have talked about the economy, and economics is one of the most fascinating subjects for me. You may have noticed that the recent quarter GDP growth rate was 1.1%, way above expectations, and the fastest quarterly rise I believe since 1999. For me, this would not have happened, had we elected a Labour government, who had lost the plot completely with regards to business and economics many many years ago, and lost it further still during the recession (ie rescuing the banks – why reward a bank for doing so much economic damage by …