This is data on the first estimate of changes in GDP in July:
Overall GDP was up 0.2%.
The growth was down to the increase in services, overall. The causes of that were increases in GDP testing, more NHS activity and more educational activity. Without them, there would not have been growth.
Thank goodness for the state in that case: we would be in a bigger mess without it.
Manufacturing grew by 0.1%.
There is little in here that says the economy is in better condition and a great deal that says it needs serious state support.
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This is the inconvenient truth that will haunt and possibly destroy Truss.
That her own party destroyed the economy with BREXIT.
Unfortunately, it will be the public sector that I work in that is buying supplies from and working alongside the private sector that will be destroyed in order to hide this fact.
Hatred is a most unpleasant thing, but after 12+ years it is hard to think anything else to feel toward the Tories. There has to be a reckoning somehow.
Agree completely, PSR. I hope the reckoning will come quickly. Although I suspect it won’t.
What happened to the full blown recession you said we were in?
It is already stagnant
And I always said the crisis was the winter to come
‘Paul Simonson’
Richard never said we were in one, he said we were on the way to one and we are – stagnation means slowing down and soon we will be going backwards.
“They’re gonna have to introduce conscription
They’re gonna have to take away my prescription
If they wanna get me making toys
If they wanna get me, well, I got no choice
Career opportunities, the ones that never knock
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock
Career opportunity, the ones that never knock
Career, career, career
And I’m never gonna knock”
Its a coming.
Though an accidental result, it is one that I am convinced should be welcomed!
Careful policies are needed to enhance ‘degrowth’. See for instance, Jason Hickel ‘What Would It Look Like If We Treated Climate Change as an Actual Emergency?’ https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/what-would-it-look-like-if-we-treated-climate-change-as-an-actual-emergency
For the last 400,000 years, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was never above 300 parts per million.
It was 414 parts per million (ppm) in August last year. The concentration is now 417 ppm. This massive rate of increase must be stopped and reversed – starting this year.
THERE IS TOO MUCH CARBON DIOXIDE IN THE ATMOSPHERE NOW. MUCH TOO MUCH!
The immediate consequences are:
First, devastation from too much water in Pakistan.
Second, too little rainfall in Africa. The resultant famine is particularly severe in Somalia. Starvation is widespread.
Third, droughts have caused river levels, and underground water tables, to drop severely so that food shortages are predicted for Europe, North America and Africa.
Fourth, fires a few months ago in Britain, in Europe and, more recently, in California have caused widespread destruction of woodland as well as property.
Fifth, pollution from the fires is damaging human health but there is an effect which is worse: white ice and snow rebound most of the sun’s heat back into space. But when soot falls on them, it’s the other way round – most of the sun’s heat is absorbed and glaciers melt more rapidly. Sadly, that’s not the end of it because in previous years soot has been covered by fresh falls of snow – and this extra soot is revealed as the snow melts. The multiplying effect of soot being added year after year is accelerating the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the north polar ice cap. At the South Pole, melting is caused by high levels of CO2 so that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet gives particular cause for concern.
This last is now resulting in accelerating sea level rise. Every coastal community, whether urban or rural, will be affected.
It is likely that DECISIVE ACTION TO CUT C02 EMISSIONS RAPIDLY would slow this effect and provide some extra time for adaptation – BY THE NEXT FEW GENERATIONS.
We must act now, for our children.
European nations which have emitted the most CO2, should make dramatic reductions. Having led in the wrong direction with the Industrial Revolution, Britain has a duty to lead with large cuts in C02 emissions.
Hopefully, the United States and other big emitters will follow suit.
Human beings need: food, clothing, warmth and shelter.
For the ‘warmth’, a start could be made in the UK by abolishing standing charges for gas and electricity (and water), introducing low charges for basic needs, followed by increasingly high prices for profligate use.
Travel is often useful. Of course, it is sometimes essential, but annual foreign holidays are not necessary. Regulation and rationing are required together job guarantee schemes and all sorts of publicity campaigns designed to ensure that every human being in our generation could still have a very good life.
The children and grandchildren might then have a fair chance of staying alive!
The BBC were quick to point out the economy is growing again in their news bulletins today. Panic over everyone, it’s the start of a great new age in British history!
Someone on the comments suggested that this is down to Brexit. That is just lazy thinking, when a quick glance at the EU tells us that most countries in Europe are in equally bad shape, and going nowhere fast.
I’m afraid this has been coming for some decades, as our civilisation has been powered by fossil fuels and in particular oil. Sadly, the surplus fossil energy after energy expended for extraction is diminishing fast (EROEI), and as surplus energy diminishes so does the intricate complexity of civilisation.
Sri Lanka is the canary in the coalmine of where we are heading economically. Sri Lanka foolishly, dived headlong into the green energy abyss, only to find out the hard way that a flourishing economy and society, cannot be (thermodynamic ally) supported on ‘renewables’.
Expecting to have a thriving economy based on intermittent wind and 12 hours of intermittent solar is beyond a joke.
The world is in trouble because there is not enough surplus fossil energy to support 7.8 billion people, and certainly not at a Western lifestyle. Something has to give, and that something is the kind of economy and lifestyle that we have enjoyed for five decades.
It is indisputable that Brexit has had a big impact on us