Not quite accurate. Anyone who has a mortgage is much better off than they could have been since 2008 because the world economic crash has meant a record low level of bank interest.

Very few people in Euroland and the USA are better off either.

And we did not have a double did recession or a triple did recession. The initial figures have always to be taken with a pinch of salt as not all the stats are available until some considerable time later when the actual real fugures can be produced.

Well you might not like what I say and I may make an odd mistake but I do not make things up. Because I disagree with much of the left wing whinging comments on here does not make me right wing. You can disagree with an extremist without being one yourself.

It would be nice to hear some facts from you on the good news of the recovery

Quote ="BobbyD"Then there's the GDP of the Euro area, our largest trading partner. From www.tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/indicators It's almost like our economy started to slow down again when the economy of the area we do the most trade with slowed down.'" I keep making the same point plus the drop in North Sea oil income plus the drop in the financial sector effecting us more than most.

Quote ="BobbyD"Then there's the GDP of the Euro area, our largest trading partner. From www.tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/indicators It's almost like our economy started to slow down again when the economy of the area we do the most trade with slowed down.'" I keep making the same point plus the drop in North Sea oil income plus the drop in the financial sector effecting us more than most.

I was questioning the made up facts from one of your right wing friends on here. But sadly he seems to have done a runner. Just like you will do soon.

There is little good news in the economy so far. Of course growth is preferable to contraction but they're still relatively low figures and we have a huge amount of ground to make up.
The unemployment figures have fallen. Yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest people have been forced to take very low hour/zero hour contract jobs when not suitable or forced off JSA altogether by jobcentre sanctions. The Unemployment figures don't take into account the underemployed. Also the employment figures include all unpaid family workers (up 9%) and all those on apprenticeships, work experience and government training & employment programmes. Not to mention the employment figures don't take into account population increases, whilst the unemployment rate does but doesn't factor in foreign, short stay workers. And the claimant count doesn't include those now on Universal Credit.
Median real wages have fallen since 2009 and continue to fall. Now at a level similar to a decade ago.
Redundancies have stayed roughly similar, but are still only at the level they were 2 years ago.
The number of underemployed workers has risen by 300,000 since 2010 and continues to rise with a large number simply classed as "unknown".
The long term unemployment rate has increased and continues to.
GDP per capita has fallen since 2010 and shows no sign of increasing.

This is, of course, all a national picture and we know some areas are particularly suffering. Which hasn't been helped by the abolition of the regional development agencies and a huge cut to government investment under the Coalition, down to negative net figures.

As for your (and George's) assertion that the post election economic dip was due to the Eurozone? That's just guff.
The UK dip started end of Q3/start of Q4 2010. As the graph you've used shows the Eurozone didn't go into recession until 2012. Plus during that period exports increased, they didn't take a hit. Both business and consumer confidence were both positive and increasing in the period prior to the election. As was consumer spending, retail sales, housing production, industrial production, capacity utilisation and manufacturing production. Whilst the number of unemployed, the youth unemployment rate, government bond yields, inflation and bankruptcies were falling.
It was the UK government not the Eurozone that so affected the UK economy.

...

UK GDP per capita



So when you say "fallen since 2010" you meant to type "risen, then dropped" otherwise you're simply a right winger who makes up facts or is it FACTS!!!

UK

Euro

France

Germany

Italy

Why should they?

There is an element of truth in the mortgage low interest, not totally true as those who bought into fixed rates will confirm but fortunately for those like me our fixed rate ended at the time that base rates were falling and I rang the Nationwide up for advice - and this is why I favour mutual societies rather than outright mortgage selling shops - they advised that their 2.5% base rate would last "for at least 12 months", three years later we're still benefiting.

It still does not disguise the fact that household bills in total have never been higher and I include that mad period in the 80s when interest rates hit 17% and this has to worry the two parties in government, everyone has to start feeling better about the economy early in 2014 to drive up to the election, I expect some sweetening and incredible PR in the early months of next year.

As for the ONS stats, yes they are adjusted, usually after two quarters and the initial figures are always labelled "to be taken with a pinch of salt", it is however unusual for the figures to be adjusted fifteen months later and even more so five years later and you have to ask what or who was the driving force behind that seemingly random choice of revisionary calculus ?

You really know absolutely nothing about it, do you?

Which of Labour's policies caused the subprime market in the US to collapse triggering the whole thing?

While others conveniently ignore the reasons for the whole balls up in the first place...

Why shouldn't they?

That they do not disguises the depth of the issues, both individual, societal and economic.

Not every one has the time to spend their life on forums. Some of us have to work.



Well we disagree. Given the state of the world's economies what we are seeing in the UK is very good news. Nobody is doing cartwheels and I have stated there is much more still to do. But the evidence is clear Osbornes austerity plan is working and his critics have been proven to be wrong. You appear to be a sore loser!



Some of this maybe true but the overall number of new jobs has risen which should be welcomed given the very difficult hand this government were dealt. This increase in jobs is the complete opposite of what the left wing economist doom-mongers predicted.


Really?



So you think the many and serious problems left by Labour and the world economic meltdown could all be solved at a stroke eh?



Are you really saying the euozone crisis and recession had no serious impact on our economy?

Underemployed isn't unemployed.

I didn't say that it was.

But we use unemployment as one measure of the economic health of the nation. Underemployment is the same – and it closely linked to the question of unemployment.

And one present question is what the downward movement on unemployment means. Because if people have largely gone into jobs that only, for example, give them an hour a week of work, with concomitantly low pay, then that is merely a disguise for a continuation of something that is almost the same as unemployment and costs society and taxpayer in the same way, and celebrating it is mere spin.

If it isn't unemployment then why count it as it is, let it have it's own measure, give it's own identity, make it feel important.

Who counts on the underemployed stats? Is it new starters? Part time workers? Full time workers? Do they want the extra hours to buy heat, clothes, an iPad, a holiday, dental work (sorry, just forked out £49)?

On the flip side, are there overemployed (made up word) people? How many want less hours?

Then there's the firms themselves, if they don't have the orders surely it's better to employ on the basis of what they can fulfill? I was at a customer last Thursday, the line runs on average 3 days per week, but things are picking up and that will increase probably towards the middle of next year based on how the sector operates. Vauxhalls at Ellesmere Port is another. You can bet the guys/girls at these places would class themselves as underemployed, but I will also bet they'd rather be that than unemployed.

Nobody minds the classic four day week on reduced pay to get the company out of the mire approach, indeed this is why a redundancy procedure recommends that ALL employees are consulted because often that is the preferred method rather than having job losses.

The problem of under-employment at the moment isn't so much that "Its a bit slack so we'll drop one shift", its the growing tendency to advertise new posts as limited hours, 20 being a favourite, zero being the devil incarnate and then using employees on those contracts as spare capacity - its nice and flexible for the employer and seems like a good idea at the time but in reality it is no way to continue running an economy if you hope to be a financially strong economy.

For one thing, no-one on 20 hours a week can support themselves let alone a family, on £126 gross (NMW) per week - anyone who is only guaranteed those hours will struggle to find accommodation and will definitely be claiming housing benefit and working tax credits, in other words the public purse is paying people to work, worse still those employees will barely be paying any tax and their tax take will definitely be far greater than their contribution.

Its fine doing this in such austere times as we just have to get through, but its no master plan for the future and some recording of such numbers should be made (if not already), the ideal plan when the good times roll again should be to have everyone out of the range of tax credits and not by simply reducing the limits for when they become payable.

GDP per Capita when the Coalition came to power - 32809
Latest GDP per Capita - 32722

Thanks for proving the GDP per capita figures have fallen since 2010.

Again, thanks for proving that the Coalition took over a growing economy and caused it to falter before any Eurozone issue occurred.

Because underemployment is an important indicator of the strength of the economy. When the unemployment figures are released we get plenty of different stats on unemployment, employment, private & public sector employment, long term unemployment, youth unemployment, number of jobs, vacancies, and the claimant count but no figures on underemployment despite them being part of the same method of data collection.

The straight unemployment figure is a little like the straight GDP figures. It's good they're heading in the right direction but they are one indicator. To just take that one indicator, whilst ignoring all others is misleading as to the strength of the economy.

The more logical measure to adopt would be those in full time employment, defined say as a minimum of 35 hours a week.

It would then be simple enough to calculate a total figure of how many people are part-time, on zero hours and actually unemployed.

No politician is gong to do that though as I suspect the figures would be pretty shocking but it would give us a true figure of how many of those 30m people in work stand a chance of supporting themselves as they have a full time job.

The rest? Well the state (i.e. you and me assuming you are a taxpayer) will be topping up their wages with benefit payments i.e. subsidising the profits of their employers.

Are you happy to be doing that?



My Dad used to say (and this is decades ago I remember him saying it) that overtime was a great evil as it meant employers could save on employing enough workers to do the necessary work. It has always happened that people in employment take extra hours and employers are happy for them to do so. Back when my Dad said this is would have been seen as very left wing given things like zero hours contracts were unheard of.

There are also increasing numbers ( record numbers in fact) of over 65's still working.

What is needed is a combination of decent wages, pensions and legislation to ensure employers don't exploit people and people don't hog jobs.




Companies like Vauxhall do things called planning. They know what the demand for cars is at particular times of year and they employ economist to predict what they need to build. They aren't take by surprise and suddenly need to rush out and contact an employment agency to employ someone on zero hours contracts.

They couldn't anyway as I doubt there are people with the necessary skills sat by the phone waiting for a few hours assembly line work this week so they will retain their workers as a proper contract with a certain amount of guaranteed work - and pay.

For things like shops that have a Christmas employment issue they know what day Christmas falls on and ha e for decades planned accordingly. Temporary work at such times has always been there but is no excuse for zero hours jobs elsewhere.

Basically zero hours contracts excuses companies from planning and competence. They can just rush out and pick a few people up. If unemployment ever does drop significantly they won't be able to find people to work like this. What are they going to do then?

what? In the Real World?




It's not very good news. It's better than contraction, but all the other economic indicators point to a still weak economy. Especially one so reliant on consumer spending. Just repeating that austerity is working over and over again doesn't make it so. The last 3 years have proved it didn't work. You appear to be a cheerleader for George Osborne.


This government were presented with a growing economy and all economic indicators being positive and managed to turn that around. Whilst any increase in jobs is welcome, again the other indicators point to the economy being weak. Some of the left may have gone over board. So did some on the right. Most notably the Chancellor of the Exchequer when comparing us to Greece. But some peoples predictions doesn't detract from what actually happened under this government.



Yes, that fake little follower of yours has already proved it for me


I think the effects on ordinary people could have been mitigated far, far more by pursuing a different and more logical economic policy.


I'm sure it did have an impact, the amount of which won't truly be known for a long time if ever. But it certainly didn't have an impact before it actually started.

No one is disputing the world financial crash and the effects it had on all economies. What some Labour supporters choose to overlook is the poor state Britain had been left in by the Blair/Brown Government's disasterous economic policies.

Despite enjoying 10 years of a worldwide economic boom Buster ("no more boom and bust"icon_wink.gif Brown and Ed Balls-up presided over an unprecedented period of borrow and spend which grew the state (and their potential re-election supporters) out of proportion. In those good times they failed to do the maintenance work the country so badly needed. They also failed to regulate our own financial services industry adequately. So when the world economic bubble burst Britain was in much poorer shape than most of the other leading economies with a huge deficit and no policies in place to halt the downward plunge.

The coalition inherited a country in a serious fiscal crisis with its public services "broken" and mired in "deep-seated problems of unsustainable spending, uncompetitive taxes and unreformed public services" as Osborne said.

These, and the other factors I have previously mentioned are the reasons why things have taken so long to see the real signs of recovery. This is the Buster Brown/ Ed Balls-up legacy that we all shouldn't forget.

Being a politician is an unusual job.

You can spend years, even decades sitting on your hands in opposition viewing the government at close quarters, working with civil servants, understanding how civil service departments work, hell you ARE a civil servant, you spend all this time watching and waiting and criticising and planning on how you would do things differently, preparing shadow budgets that you profess would work much better and come election time you present yourself as the most eminently qualified person to do the job.

And then you get elected and on your first day in the new job you run screaming from the building with "I didn't realise it was THIS BAD!!!" and spend the next five years blaming your predecessor.

In a private business you'd get away with that for a few weeks but then your boss would start to ask you what YOUR plans were and how, given that you knew what the job was when you applied for it, YOU were going to put it right.

?????