Monthly Archives: April 2014

“Britain is coming back,” said George Osborne, after the first GDP estimate for this year showed another quarter of 0.8 percent growth. It’s better news than we have had for years and the ONS press release was suitably upbeat too, pointing out … Continue reading →

Eric Pickles chose St.George’s Day to announce the restoration of England’s traditional counties. He’s not actually suggesting a re-organisation of local government, of course. He’s just suggesting that councils put up county signs along the old boundaries and start using … Continue reading →

I take a break for a week or so and lots of people publish stuff about self-employment. Even the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee were discussing it earlier this month, describing it as a “striking feature” of the UK’s labour market … Continue reading →

The UK will grow faster in 2014 than any of the other major economies, the International Monetary Fund said last week. It gave George Osborne something to crow about and the chance to have a dig at the IMF for its … Continue reading →

Last week there was an almighty row about people taking pictures of women eating on the Tube and posting them on Facebook. Going by the media and Twitter commentary, everybody seemed to agree that this was a Bad Thing. Even the BBC Breakfast presenters … Continue reading →

Ben Dellot started something when he suggested that there might be more self-employed workers than public sector employees by 2018. Number of self-employed and public sector workers 2010 -2020 Rob Grant pitched in, saying he reckons that London has already gone past … Continue reading →

Around the time of the budget, I heard quite a lot of talk about the economy returning to its pre-crisis level this year. If the OBR’s forecasts are right, growth in 2014 should see the economy making up the GDP lost in 2008 … Continue reading →

Almost as soon as the austerity thing started, right-ish commentators started complaining that the government was not really planning any significant spending cuts. Here’s John Redwood barely a month after the Coalition took office. Allister Heath made a similar complaint in the Telegraph in January … Continue reading →