Friday 11 February 2022

UK growth at 7.5% in 2021

Despite what  the headlines will try to say, the economic growth last year merely puts the UK on par with most other Western Countries post-pandemic. 

The UK had the highest fall in GDP and productivity given we were hit hard like Italy with the first wave of Covid. 

Since then, the successful vaccine roll-out and some spirited determination to live with the virus rather than have constant lockdowns, has allowed the UK to play catch-up. Meanwhile, France and Germany have had a harder time with the later waves and so have not seen their economies re-bound as strongly. 

Germany in particular is in a challenging position. It's main export market for manufacture is China and its main energy supplier is Russia. This is not a good geo-political place to be and there is no easy way out of this for Germany politically or economically. 

Still, that the UK has recovered to near par is a good thing. However, the extra NHS spending, endless tax rises and interest rate rises are going to bake in a nasty downturn at some point, it is quite a way down from such high levels of growth but stagflation beckons for at least a year or two. 

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

What I am impressed by, if I understand Thomas Sampson's twitter correctly, is that imports from the EU have fallen relative to non-eu imports, while exports to the EU are at the same level relative to non-EU exports.

This says nothing about absolute figures, and perhaps we are just importing more from non-EU nations - I'd imagine oil imports are up by value.

Anonymous said...

There is no way we are exporting the same amount to the EU.
The EU is adding extra charges on everything.

From June or July, the uk will start slapping the Eu with the same spiteful taxes they have been doing to us, since official leaving day. Then the situation, MIGHT, improve.

Anonymous said...

@CU where is your faith in UK plc.

We grow and have grown despite the litany of incompetent politicians of all shades in the past 70 years. We appear to want to chase *comparative* GDP growth as if it is winning a football trophy when there is much more to life than an extra 0.01% GDP.

Of course the daily *crises* played out on the media are all entertaining but there are as far removed from the reality of peoples' lives as East Enders.

Anoneumouse said...

And current inflation is 7.5%

cancel culture ??!!

andrew said...


"We grow and have grown despite the litany of incompetent politicians of all shades in the past 70 years. "


I hired a french tour guide for a day to take us around cathar castles in '18 and he had a v. dim view of the pols (raclure de bidet parisien - alway good to learn new insults) and was pretty clear his part of france does ok despite central govt.


E-K said...

Stagflation a year or two ?

Snag is that it takes a lot longer for wages to catch up and even if inflation reduces it is as a percentage of the much bigger previous inflation.

This slip in standard of living is here to stay. It is a shift of wealth West to East. You won't be able to eat a crab or a lamb reared here without paying huge amounts for it.

In the third world there is a lot of produce.. it doesn't mean that the locals get to consume it.

E-K said...

So.

- Crime up 14%

- Ukraine and Taiwan looking vulnerable

- Inflation through the roof...

All my Covid predictions coming true and knock the socks off my competition win this year.

"The whinger" was right all along.

I cannot believe people are still wearing masks. When will this end ?

Elby the Beserk said...

E-K said...
So.

I cannot believe people are still wearing masks. When will this end ?

8:38 pm
=============================================

Polls suggest that a majority of people want over-zealous state command and control as a permanent feature.

After all, that approach has worked so very well in the past, has it not?

FUBAR doesn't even begin to describe what's going on - e.g. Daily Sceptic y'day linked to an article relating how the government are selling off a jab factory that cost us £200 million. Not one jab produced.

Johnson's answer to everything - and whatever you think of Cummings, he was right on this - is to piss away even more money we hav't got the kick whatever can down the road.

Lils's recent experiences with the NHS confirm that that is on the verge of collapse (indeed, a consultant she saw recently agreed).

Stay free. And bloody well stay healthy.

Up the Truckers!

Seelby the Berk said...

“Up the Truckers!”

LOL

Don Cox said...

Freedom is not paying taxes, and being able to say what you want.

Nomads and mountain folk are sometimes free. The American pioneers were free for a while. (Many Americans would like to return to those days.)

Don Cox

lilith said...

Freedom may mean not paying taxes to you Don. It means bodily autonomy and personal responsibility to me.

Don Cox said...

If you don't pay taxes, you get those.

Don