In April 2025, average UK energy prices will rise another 6.4%, leaving an average household cost of £1,849 which is £600 more than 3 years ago. It’s not just households experiencing a rise in energy costs, IL businesses face the highest cost of electricity in Europe. It is proving very damaging for the remaining industrial …
There are many ways for statistics to be misleading. Firstly, governments can just outright lie and make up their own statistics. When inflation was too high in Argentina, the government ordered the statistics agency to reduce the inflation rate. Problem solved. In Soviet times, local officials would fall over themselves to produce statistics that iron …
The UK was the first country to industrialise, but also one of the first to deindustrialise. UK manufacturing as a a share of GDP has fallen from 30% in 1970 to 8% in 2024. The UK is not unique in smaller share of manufacturing, but the decline has been relatively bigger than other countries. Manufacturing …
It’s pretty easy to talk about the problems with the UK economy – 18 years of low growth, stagnant real wages, low productivity, low investment, housing costs through the roof. The numbers don’t lie. If past trends had continued from 2007, average households would be at least £8,000 a year better off. If we could …
Whilst UK incomes have stagnated in recent years, the UK’s net wealth has increased from £2.9 trillion in 1995 to £12.2 trillion last year. The biggest rise is not in wealth related to productive assets but passive wealth – basically rising house prices. In recent decades the ratio of wealth to income has more than …
Crazy Regulations Which Hold the Economy BackWatch this video on YouTube There is a new window regulation which states new windows on upper stories have to be 1.1 metre off the ground because of the risk that people may fall out of them. It is argued that due to global warming people will open windows …
“Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world,” A quote from Britannia Unchained by Liz Truss, Dominic Raab and Kwasi Kwarteng. It’s the kind of lazy comment you might hear down the pub, but given the UK’s poor economic productivity is it valid to question a nation’s approach …
It’s not been a good week for the UK economy with the Bank of England downgrading economic growth and upgrading inflation forecasts. We’re heading for stagflation, the worst of both worlds. If you wanted more bad news, the Bank of England warned that productivity growth may actually be even worse than the pretty dismal statistics …