So, The total number of people out of work is now at its lowest level for more than five years. The economy is now at pre-recession levels and rapidly growing. Will people admit the coalition government have done a good/fantastic job?

The housing boom is a fly in the ointment I admit, although this is mainly an issue for London which is why interest rates will slowly creep up soon.

Imagine the utter mess we would be in if balls and sillyband got their way and chose to spend money the country didn’t have to get out of the recession.

I cant wait to hear from Binners.

Its all a facade.

One mention of an interest rate rise and the ‘strength’ of the economy will change.

I thinks that’s a fair summery edward2000. Well done.

well its BS if you ask me

after 20 years of work
im unemployed again for the 2nd time in 2 years, only this time I havent bothered signing on as I cannot be arsed with the ridiculous efforts at the job centre to get you off their books by any means

I expect there are plenty of other people either excluded and off the books or like me just cant be bothered with the useless demoralising efforts of the dwp

youd have to be a special kind of gullible to believe the governments numbers tell the real story

edward2000 – Member

So, The total number of people out of work is now at its lowest level for more than five years.

Which is a good headline… til you remember that we’ve been in a recession for almost that entire period so “lowest for the last 5 years” is basically saying “Lowest point in a very high spell, woo hoo!. The last time it was this high was 1996. Underemployment is at a record high. Youth uneployment remains high. And wages continue to fall in real terms.

I think you need to judge how the UK is doing and the speed of recovery compared to the rest or Europe and the World, we’re doing a lot better than most.

I think we’d have taken the current situation a few years back when it was looking exceptionally bleak.

But this still represents a very weak underlying recovery, propped by low interest rates and central bank support. Sadly one of the main effects of the recession has been the move towards much more flexible hire and fire for companies. This, coupled with the number of people who are still flirting with default on mortgages, could turn things very quickly in the wrong direction when interest rates rise in the next six months.

We have a retail based economy, which makes it very vulnerable to falls in disposable income and even the perception of trouble ahead. A lot of people are in insecure jobs and worrying about rising outgoings.

Will people admit the coalition government have done a good/fantastic job?

I don’t see why delaying recovery by several years might be described as “fantastic”, but then I’m not a Tory supporter so you wouldn’t expect me to.

I also reject the Tory nonsense that Tories reduce taxation, cut public spending, and have a good record on growth and budgetary deficits, because they don’t.

Sometimes it’s wise not to believe everything the Tories tell you 💡

Unemployment Figures are for those ‘out of work and in receipt of unemployment benefit’ not quite the same as unemployed!

Rapid growth? Compared with who?

Hosing bubble, the root cause of defaulting in the good old USA which triggered the prime lending crash….

Living standards have fallen at their fastest rate in decades, poverty exists, infrastructure is crumbling, I could go on…..

Rose tinted specs anyone

There is no pleasing some people. Kimbers you have my sympathies. I can forward you my CV if you like? It is a CV which was professionally written and i paid good money for it. I am more than happy for you to use it as a template.

Recovery? What recovery? Oh… the one that the 5% at the top have benefitted from? Yeah… I’m sure they’re really enjoying it, and will vote accordingly

For the rest of us? Living standards still falling? The unemployment drop just meaning more people on part time, or zero hours contracts, or people stripped of their benefits

And a housing bubble in the South East, distorting the ‘real’ economy in the rest of the country, fuelling us up for another crash as unreformed banks lend at levels that will be completely unsustainable once interest rates rise, as they surely must do?

Yip… Georges economic miracle looks bloody great doesn’t it? When you consider the hundreds of billions he’s effectively put in through QA. Deja vu anyone?

I should quantify that by saying that the idea of putting the two Eds in charge of the economy doesn’t bear thinking about either

Would you like brown sauce or ketchup on your huge shit sandwich?

Let’s be honest, tbe last election was not the one to win. Whoever was in power would be unpopular by now. Tough decisions had to be taken regardless.

The economy is recovering slowly, but a lot is housing/retail led. The banks and better off have forgotten the hard times again and are getting careless, interest rates need to be eased up gently just to prepare people for a return to normal rate levels.

More people are in some kind of work than ever before but that hides a lot of problems within the workforce figures. Welfare crackdowns have not been targeted well enough so many genuine deserving people have been penalised along with tbe workshy ones. And there are workshy ones, I have to deal with them along with the genuine ones.

Biggest issue is cost of living, especially lack of affordable housing. HTF do we have system were 75% of housing benefit claimants are in work? That isn’t just the current Muppets fault, the previous Muppets had 13 years to put policies in place because tbe problem has been there since the 80s.

However bad it is now for some people, I feel – and other opinions are available – that the Two Eds would have made things worse for the economy as a whole. Next May I will have to decide which is the lesser of the evils to vote for, still not sure.

MCTD – underpaid, underresourced, public servant

There is no pleasing some people.

Yep, not only was not taxing their pasties from Greggs enough, but nor was this :

Some people show no gratitude.

well its BS if you ask me

after 20 years of work
im unemployed again for the 2nd time in 2 years

a sample of one isn’t exactly a good indicator is it?
if you took me as an example i have billed as much in the first 3 months of this tax year as i did in the whole of 2009 (recession year) and i have only had one weekend this year (since jan) when i haven’t worked at least one day over the weekend and have had to turn work away.
in fact i haven’t really stopped since around march 2010 and my income has grown year on year since the recession started to wane.
this is working in the london centric media/advertising world so a bit of a microcosm that is the first thing to be hit when everything goes down the pan but usually the first to pick up again.
in fact i only know one person out of work at the moment and he used to work for the bank of England!

Repeat after me….

Ridiculous, and unsustainable, house price rises in the South East is not an economic recovery

With the unemployment figures should we remember that there are millions more people here than in 96?

This ‘economy’ idea is too all-embracing, it does not account for who gets what.
There is growth but a disproportionate amount of that is going to the richest 1%. Their money is very liquid and is not useful for stimulating economic activity. If you want to do that, give money to the poor as they have a high marginal rate of consumption. Giving money to the poor however is an anathema to the Tories.
Low unemployment rates are brought about by increasing numbers of people describing themselves as ‘self-employed’ and often taking a massive pay cut at the same time. Most housing benefit is claimed by people in work, often on zero hours contracts and minimum wage. If we had a more equal distribution of pay like in Scandinavia we wouldn’t need persuading that things are getting better because we would know it in our wallets. Can you think of any/many people who are experiencing significant growth? I can’t. But then I hang out with members of the 99%.

Will people admit the coalition government have done a good/fantastic job?

😆

You see, in the good old days, you were poor, you got ill and you died. And yet these days people seem to think they’ve got some sort of God-given right to be cured. And what is the result of this sloppy socialist thinking? More poor people. In contrast, my policies would eradicate poor people, thereby eliminating poverty. And they say that we Conservatives have no heart.

The Rt Hon Alan B’stard MP

See – the tories are far more caring – Labour couldn’t even be arsed to feed the starving. Thanks to those nice tories they have many more options open to them…

Kimbers you may wish to read my post in reply to your initial post.

Much better to run an economy by saying the word “prudent” in every sentence for a decade.

and then handing it over at an engineeered time to a guy with grey hair and black eyebrows, just before the excrement starts hitting the ventilation 😉

kimbers – best to listen to this before inserting food bank figures from Trussel Trust.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b042lp94

cheers ed, you can send if you like, Id be keen to see, just blank out any personal details etc

my problem is that Im stuck in the ridiculous position of paying a considerable amount of childcare in London that means theres not actually much benefit to me working unless I can get enough to cover it

Im also in a specialist industry (cancer research) that doesnt pay that great and is still having funding issues

I can forward you my CV if you like? It is a CV which was professionally written and i paid good money for it. I am more than happy for you to use it as a template.

I’ll take you up on that offer if you don’t mind. ?

My CV needs some work as it was written by a numpty (me!)

Nealglover@ gmail.com

Imagine the utter mess we would be in if balls and sillyband got their way and chose to spend money the country didn’t have to get out of the recession.

Or.. imagine how much sooner we’d have got out of it…?

You know anything about economics or are you talking bollocks perhaps?

Will people admit the coalition government have done a good/fantastic job?

Ok in a more sensible manner – we don’t know if they did a good job, because we don’t know what would have happened if a different course of action had been taken.

The recovery hasn’t happened where I live. In the grim North.

I run a business that does all the things a good business should – quality, unique designs, bespoke services – but we rely on people having enough spending power to be able to go for the good stuff. We’re just not seeing it.

We export to the south via the internets and have visitors who are a different story. But basically this is a completely different economy up here.

edward2000 – Member

So, The total number of people out of work is now at its lowest level for more than five years.

and how many millions ‘in work’ are just on a zero-hours contract, or some jobcentre scam to hide the numbers?

The economy is now at pre-recession levels and rapidly growing.

and per capita?

The housing boom is a fly in the ointment

it’s more of an ‘elephant in the room’ if we’re doing metaphors.

although this is mainly an issue for London

and any prole under the age of 30 who doesn’t fancy life as a serf.

interest rates will slowly creep up soon.

our economy is doing great, but we’re worried about 2% interest-rates? – something’s not right.

And anyway, there’s more to life than money; healthcare, education, environment, energy, transport, agriculture, arts, science, infrastructure, law, social cohesion, charity, etc. Not exactly a list of tory strong-points…

It’s not always bad to spend money you don’t have. It’s called borrowing to invest, and it works if you do it right.

interesting listen stoner, although in the absence of anyone else collecting figures, according to the programme, the trussle trust is all there is to go on!

Foodbanks operating at record levels? Interest rates about to rise, this little upward blip has just been artificially ‘massaged’ by the Government help to purchase scheme starting another housing bubble.

The building trade is at last working again but there’s a huge backlog and skills shortage already, certainly here in the south.

The retail trade is still suffering from the Vat at 20% (some small retailers are still selling stock they claimed 15% back for and are now being charged 20 on the sale as an example.) We’ve had two bike stores close recently local to here and the third is literally on last gasp if the coffee shop he’s opened doesn’t work.

Consumers are being ripped apart with energy costs, business rates are far to high as are domestic rates, supporting a public sector with a wage imbalance (They pay managers too much and erode the front line staff)

I don’t have to talk about wages, how many of us have had a real term increase in the past five years?

Which leaves what disposable income to drive any further recovery.

Only the city in its perceived value paper volumes making money from money .

It works if you can afford to fund it. Increasing insecurity means that many many people will never own homes let alone other types of investment which enrich you whilst you sit on your harris.

If this forum is anything like an accurate barometer of the economy then the increase in ‘new bike’ threads and the lack of the depressing ‘shit, I’m in the STW redundancy club’ threads would indicate things are getting better.

It seems to me that the economy is now at the tipping point between recovery and boom. Time to apply the fiscal break of an 0.5% interest rate rise to stop this house price fixated mania now. However, little will change before next summers election as short term power and ego trumps a long term sustainable economy.

Suspect some of that LBS closure issues are more related to the likes of CRC, Wiggle and Evans than just pure economy. Must be tighter and tighter margins all round on the 1000 GBP cyclescheme sales.

Similar for book trade. Similar for music trade.

All helped along by local authorities penalising town centre shoppers. LBS needs to move and rent in the out of town shopping centres.

oh and the standard of living took a massive nose dive when the corporates came up with a clever way to make everyone over the age of 7 *need* a £250-£500 swipey phone and data contract on what would have been a business tariff several years ago. essentially making 50% of the nation have a permanently renewing 2 yr HP scheme.

I lost my job this year, didn’t happen in 2009 so things are worse now. Obviously.

Well it looks to me that in my line of work (IT projects) there are more opportunities around than in recent years – would have struggled to find something good a couple years back. So more business investment going on which helps the economy and is a sign of confidence.

Labour’s way would have been to create a lot more debt, hard to say if that would have led to a better situation now but when do we say we have too much debt?

As much as London house prices have been increasing I don’t see a house price crash there anytime soon – didn’t happen in 2008 just a slow down then made up ground in recent years.

How a long drawn out sluggish recovery can be called a success is a mystery to me. GDP per capita is still below 2008 levels, and wage growth is very sluggish, so still a lot of work to do. However, the back end loaded public sector spending cuts have still to fully kick in, so the Tories are ensuring we continue the very weak recovery trend.

Re London and house prices: London can look after itself. Prices go up there, everywhere else takes its lead and the provinces see increases in prices that don’t reflect value in terms of location. Recession hits, London remains buoyant because of basic supply/demand economics and the rest of the country falls into negative equity after being seduced/panicked into paying over the odds for houses.

What’s the answer? I wish all house price reports would give separate figures for in/out M25.

Re London and house prices: London can look after itself.

Only it doesn’t, the knock on affect spreads wide and far e.g. lots of new build in cambridge is snapped up by Londoners as it’s cheaper and quicker to live here and commute in than buy in London. This means average wage earners here are completely locked out of the housing market, so they buy in satellite villages and then out buy their residents…

So, The total number of people out of work is now at its lowest level for more than five years.

I’ve a mate who’s job in the DWP is to get people off the books, not by necessarily finding them a job or help with other issues they have, but just straightforward “make sure they’re not claiming”

In her own words “it’s **** depressing work”

FF: I was probably skirting around the point but there is an argument for independant mortgage rates in London and for the rest of the UK.