{"id":79639,"date":"2025-01-16T07:56:49","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T07:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=79639"},"modified":"2025-01-16T07:56:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T07:56:49","slug":"rounding-differences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/01\/16\/rounding-differences\/","title":{"rendered":"Rounding differences:"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/live\/2025\/jan\/16\/uk-economy-forecast-to-have-returned-to-growth-in-november-business-live\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media is making much<\/a> this morning of the fact that the economy supposedly returned to growth in November after declining last October.<\/p>\n<p>Let's be clear. The growth was 0.1% in November.<\/p>\n<p>In October, the decline was 0.1%.<\/p>\n<p>Given their proximity in time, you could fairly add these two figures together, and almost certainly, they would round to zero.<\/p>\n<p>The fact is that movements so small that they are little more than statistical rounding differences based on aggregates that themselves are based on considerable numbers of estimates seeking to measure GDP, which is a dire indicator of well-being, are being reported as if they matter when the only truth that is worth noting is that nothing of consequence when it comes to change is going on here.<\/p>\n<p>The real stories are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Inequality continues<\/li>\n<li>People are still in unnecessary poverty<\/li>\n<li>Opportunities are not being created<\/li>\n<li>Young people are still alienated<\/li>\n<li>No significant investment is happening<\/li>\n<li>Climate change is not being abated<\/li>\n<li>Trade is still stagnant because of Brexit<\/li>\n<li>Nothing the government is doing is changing any of this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those are real stories. Percentage rounding differences in meaningless measures of growth are not.<\/p>\n<p>When will the media get to the issues rather than reporting the press releases that pop into their inboxes as if they matter?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The media is making much this morning of the fact that the economy supposedly returned to growth in November after declining last October. Let&#8217;s be<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/01\/16\/rounding-differences\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79639"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79641,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79639\/revisions\/79641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}