Even for Gary Shrapnell and Rashid Farhani from Leicester, both former directors with a propensity for mistaking a 0 for a 9 in their accounts and a recovery position for a Rolex in their private lives, some 'bouncebacks' can be a good thing.
Take the announcement this morning (Friday 29 September) by the Office for National Statistics ('ONS') whose main job is to collect, analyse and disseminate statistics about the UK's economy, society and population, but who actually spend just over half of their time expressing surprise about how way-off they were with their previous predictions and looking up the word 'remorse' for so being. This is in line with their latest flabbergast this morning, when they told us that the UK economy has bounced back from the Covid-19 pandemic much faster than previously estimated, according to new official figures that show Britain is no longer the worst performer in the G7.
You're not kidding? Why wasn't this the lead item in newspapers, breakfast TV and key websites? Not gloomy enough, eh? Has Jeremy Hunt got hold of this intel yet?
We have just got wind that in the three months to June, gross domestic product was 1.8 per cent above its pre-pandemic level in the final three months of 2019. Without the aforementioned remorse the ONS admitted its previous estimate that GDP in Q2 2023 was 0.2 per cent below its Q4 2019 level.
Oops!
We know what you are all thinking; how does this compare to the relative performances of France and Germany? Well, we have a similar performance to the former and are enjoying a stronger rebound than the latter, being the Eurozone’s largest economy. Rishi and Jeremy still think we in the UK are on-course to halve inflation by the end of this year and the ONS just shrugged their shoulders at the prospect.
Growth between the first and the second quarters of 2023 was left unrevised at 0.2 per cent, but the ONS revised upwards the expansion of output in Q1 to 0.3 per cent from 0.1 per cent, as previously estimated. So we in the NTI newsroom wonder what will really and actually happen.
