As The Telegraph reports in an email this morning:
Britain’s economy expanded in the first three months of the year despite the outbreak of the Iran war at the end of February, official figures show.
The UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 0.6pc in the first quarter, according to the Office for National Statistics.
It was in line with analyst forecasts and up from 0.1pc in the final quarter of 2025.
Fairly straight reporting of what happened.
Maybe they will also have forgotten that by the end of March, almost no one in mainstream media had realised the full implications of this war, or the scale of the shortages it will create, or the economic mayhem it will cause. At the end of March, the general expectation was that the Strait of Hormuz might reopen again soon, even though there was no evidence of that, and some of us were saying that mayhem was likely. So, of course, this war had caused little economic damage by then.
It has now. Although mainstream media is still in denial about the mayhem heading our way very soon, there are reports of consumer confidence collapsing and business supply lines looking perilous.
The damage is happening now, and it is going to be very much worse, but the Telegraph has chosen to adopt the “so far, so good” line. That is their right. The only problem is that there is no evidence to back it.
The complaint is about what will happen. Even if the report was about what did happen. These are – unless The Pud exists in some sense of appearing across all time equally – different things, no?
Spud reads the e-mail he gets from the Telegraph? How sad. No friends or acquaintances?
He doesn’t understand supply & demand or cause & effect, so it is no surprise that past, present and future similarly baffle him.
The End Is Nigh!!!
Has he switched to the DoomPreacher™’s manual ( For Dummies ) for his ..Revelations… ?
Those figures are always a nonsense anyway. They’ve got the 0.6% growth headline. When it’s “revised” down next month they won’t say anything.
As the Original Jim said recently, how much of this ‘growth’ is the public sector eating the private sector?
And of course this 0.6% takes no account of growth per capita (or lack thereof).
“Prime Minister Ed Miliband”
Or Prime Mistress Angela Rayner
It is a truism that war is good for business. I believe the effects of this war, in which we are not, are overstated to cover for self-inflicted economic woes. Economic failure is government policy.
1. No-one takes the ONS seriously.
2. Even if they did was the gross GDP figure inflated by the addition of incoming “economic units” generating “economic activity” by receiving taxpayer funded housing and benefits?
3. See point (1) above.
I, for one, take ONS seriously. The data that they produce is as accurate as can be practicably produced.
The problem is the choices made by the people (sometimes politicians but more often civil servants) who tell them what data to produce – such as “Household Wealth” excluding State Pensions and DB Pensions but including the Pension Funds (worth, on average, a fraction of a Civil Servant or Teacher’s DB pension) of the self-employed.
One would rather like to hope that news reports facts and data, and the readers then decide what to make of these. The complaint here seems to be that a newspaper didn’t tell its readers what to think…
Heaven knows what he might have said if the paper had told their readers to think the wrong thing.
The complaint is about what will happen. Even if the report was about what did happen. These are – unless The Pud exists in some sense of appearing across all time equally – different things, no?
Quantum economics and Spudenberg’s uncertainty principle, innit (even though Spud’s never been uncertain about anything in his life).
Q1 growth of 0.6% gives annual growth of 2.4%, or thereabouts, possibly higher, because January.
Doesn’t really matter, as that is basically bang on trend of the last 22-ish years. In 2000, growth was on the order of 4%, and then almost halved (ok, call it a drop of a third), and bloody stayed there.
At 4% (pretty sure the chart I was looking at earlier today was on a per capita basis), the doubling period is 18 years. At 2.5%, it’s a tad under 36 years, just to point out the bleeding obvious.
Broadly, people will be feeling better off at either the 9 year mark, or slightly earlier – call it 6. That’s compared with 18 and 12.
Expectations matter. Experience rolls forward.
Arguing about 0.1% here, 0.2% there is just pathetic, re: end of para 3 above, it’s well within measurement error.
Not having a go, everyone here knows this already. Generally peeved.
Doubling time at 2.5% pa compound is 28 years. Actuarial rule of thumb: for reasonably small percentages (<30%), doubling time is 72/x.
If Murphy has confidence in his predictions of doom he could go short in the market. It should make him a lot of money if he
is right. Of course being wrong could cost him very very much more.