GDP increased by 0.4% in August, below expectations of 0.5% and still lower than pre-lockdown levels. Figures for July have also been revised downwards this morning, showing a 0.1% contraction rather than the previously reported 0.1% growth. MailOnline has the story.
Numbers published this morning by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that U.K. gross domestic product remains 0.8% lower than it was before the coronavirus crisis.
Meanwhile, the ONS said its figures for July have been revised downwards in a move likely to cause alarm in the Treasury. …
It is the first time the economy has shrunk since January this year when the winter lockdown wreaked havoc.
The ONS said growth picked up in August as the economy benefited from the full lifting of coronavirus restrictions, which boosted hospitality and events sectors.
But the August growth figure was lower than expected, showing signs of a slowdown in the U.K.’s bounce back from the pandemic as global supply chain problems take their toll.
The economy will now need to surge by 2.1% in September if it is to remain on track with the Bank of England’s forecast for overall growth of 2.1% in the third quarter of 2021.
The ONS changed its assessment of the economic picture in July because of downwardly revised data relating to the manufacture of cars, oil and gas. …
Overall consumer-facing services [also] remain 4.7% below the level recorded in February 2020.
Worth reading in full.
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Do these figures actually mean anything in current circumstances?
They mean that the UK’s measure of GDP is at best meaningless, and at worst deliberately deceptive.
If a bricklayer doubles his bill, that doubles GDP, but the exact same number of bricks get laid.
Winter is coming …
You can’t just switch large sections of an advanced economy off and on again without expecting serious, long term disruption. And we’ve built in massive inefficiencies in almost every area of life from panic measures relating to the big bad covid – distancing, remote working where it isn’t optimal, enforced absences due to ridiculous test results, increased taxation due to increased spending for the panic responses,…
We will collectively be paying the costs of this panic for a generation. In reality, all that wasted time and effort can never be recovered, but in time it will recede into memory (though the social and cultural changes for the worse as a result of the panic might themselves impose continuing costs, if the panickers cover up for their panic and there is no proper reckoning and no firm commitment to change our collective attitude to a healthier “keep calm and carry on” one).
I agree entirely, except that I think the dire effects of this in financial terms will extend for more than one generation.
Quite apart from the damage inflicted by the Government’s mismanagement of Covid, the drive to beggar ourselves with the woke Green agenda now being pushed by a Government incapable of running a p**s-up in a brewery can only compound problems in both the long and short terms.
“I agree entirely, except that I think the dire effects of this in financial terms will extend for more than one generation.“
Indeed but it will become increasingly difficult to disentangle it from the consequences of future evil incompetence of the kind you describe, and others.
What, central planning of economies doesn’t work? Who’d have thought! Its not like we have any examples from history of where such approaches have failed …
The scale of what we’ve done to ourselves will take multiple generations to pay off: we’ve borrowed enough from our descendants to win a world war, or end global slavery.
One might also consider that “our descendants” are increasingly imported from regions and countries whose ever-increasing debt will de facto never be paid off, other than through occasional write-offs.
Putting those together, one might infer that the goal is for us to never be out of debt. For us, in effect, to own nothing, only to rent from the Company Store using money borrowed from the Company Bank.
But that sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, doesn’t it? It’s simply unthinkable that it could happen here.
Like lockdowns, furloughs, muzzle mandates, jabs-for-jobs and vaxxports / social credit scores.
Sadly, that’s a possible outcome.
For a Georgist like me, I think it has already happened.
This is to ensure it continues.
It’s not only the trying to switch it off and on again – it’s also the huge uncertainty. Many people are now, understandably, displaying extreme caution with regard to anything financial as it’s widely believed that the government will put the jackboot in again this winter, causing more economic carnage.
Just look at the housing market- bugger-all being advertised for sale at the moment.
The economy at present is totally fake. It’s built on invented money, given away by a government that has none.
Bear in mind that GDP really just measures the amount of fiat currency moving around. The UK’s number even includes benefits payments.
Dumping a trillion or so of borrowed or printed fiat into people’s accounts to cover up an absence of goods being produced or services being provided is not “productivity” in the sense that people who are not economists would understand it.
This is the result of Kim Jong-Johnson doing the maximum possible damage with every policy
I don’t trust government statistics on COVID and I also have never trusted government statistics on the economy. Both are heavily manipulated to produce the desired effect.
Whatever the inflation number is double or triple it to get the real figure.
We are living in Wonderland. Words mean whatever people say they mean. It is going to get worse: we will have to suffer a great disaster – far greater than covid hysteria and the zero carbon dioxide fantasy – before we get a grip on reality.
We are an island built on coal and with vast amounts of gas still under the sea. We are self sufficient in energy. Yet we are importing gas from Russia! We are still putting CO2 into the atmosphere but we are paying Vlad to do it instead of burning our own fuel.
That typifies the utter madness that pervades our virtue signalling, woke til we’re broke culture. And it ain’t changing any time soon.
When goods are not available to purchase, their is a petrol shortage, access to medical care and equipment shortage, a shortage of lorry drivers and some food shortages with the ongoing threat Christmas will be spoiled for all, it is difficult to get the economy back on track. All of the above shortages have been created to continue the “we are all going to die” WEF narrative. Sadly all our gov’t are playing along. Threatened, bought, both ?
Is this from the Ministry For Stating The Bleedin Obvious?