Growth but of the weakest possible sort

Sally Chatterjee

Brown's judgement lies in tatters. He first predicted Britain was "well placed to weather the storm" but this sadly proved deluded, Britain was smashed harder by recession than anyother comparable country. Far from claiming to have "steered the economy through recession", surely the calamitous Brown has steered Britain onto the rocks of economic ruin?

Bob Dixon

James

Which other major economies have perforned so badly? Please list them?

Verityred

Brown is not a well man. His bungling tenure as Prime Minister has been awful, to say the least, and has pushed an unstable and delusional character over the edge. He lives in his bunker surrounded by a dwindling bodyguard of die hards.

History will not be kind to the more decent members of his party for not ridding the nation of his malicious and mendacious personality earlier.

Short the UK

Pro family.

Pro small business.

Pro smaller state.

Now is the time for the Tories to hammer home the message: Pro Small Business.

Chuck Unsworth

Margin of error is what, exactly?

And China = 9%. So, 90 x that of Britain.

Excellent work, Brown. Last country 'out of recession' (for this quarter). Let's see what heppens in the next quarter, eh?

Meanwhile anyone with any sense will move their investments overseas - the Far East seems to be a good idea. Why would anyone wish to invest in UK plc?

Obnoxio The Clown

"Tories will be able to use the fact that Britain has spent longer in recession than pretty much any other major economy, that 2009 saw a record contraction of the economy and this anaemic growth to batter Brown's reputation for economic competence still further"

But will they? They seem completely unable to dent the man.

Martyn Rowe

I'm no economist - that much is obvious - but how much has it cost us to get to 0.1% growth?

£200billion of QE for this result?

Clearly, the economy is much less black and white than that but we have to ask whether printing all that cash was worth it? Especially as it looks as though we will re-enter recession in April.

mark c

and lets not forget the christmas effect ... retailers tried very very hard indeed to make us buy stuff. The interesting figures will be inventories. Its not at all inconceivable that a tiny growth figure in Q4 2009 is met with a return to a negative figure in Q1 2010 and even beyond

Any Colour but Brown

It is easy to turn a small negative figure into a small positive, with a little imagination (as the LibDems call it). Statisticians do it all the time.

Brown cannot afford to hang around - Q4 holds the collective blow-out that is Xmas. Shops had massive sales, to get shoppers in before Xmas - that buying splurge will not run over into Q1/10.
Many companies have seasonal staffing - that will disappear in Q1/10, so, employment will be up.

Q1 is very likely to show a return to recession. I suspect Brown will act, if he sees even the slightest bounce, in the wake of these figures, and go to the Palace.

GE - early March.

Chris lancashire

Listening to Mandelson this morning it turns out we should be grateful for the way in which Labour has steered us through this "global" recession. It wos nothin' to do with us guv - we just saved the country.

You have to admire the bloke, he could make the Titanic sound like a triumph of marine engineering.

roger slade

I bet the actual figure was 0.001% rounded up. The old expression is lies, damned lies and statistics. With Labour it is just lies.

Martin Conboy

Can you actually call 0.1% increase in GDP a "growth" when 12% of GDP is being borrowed? And actually, that 12% is Darling's figures, some pundits reckon its more like 18%. We will know after the election.
Whatever, fact is the GDP is currently being massively inflated by colossal injections of borrowed money.
It cannot last. And when it stops for whatever reason, the economy will shrink again.

toco

Not even the combined spin of the disgraced Damian McBride,Charlie Whelan,Derek Draper and Alistair Campbell will be able to get the alarmingly erratic and increasingly delusional Gordon Brown out of this abject failure on the financial front.We need a change of Government sooner rather than later and certainly before June if we are to retain our AAA status.

RMH

Anyone have the data regarding the revised figures, are they normal up/down/same?

oldtimer

"Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus" (Mountains will heave in childbirth, and a silly little mouse will be born) seems an appropriate comment.

I happened to turn on Sky News just before the announcement to discover there was to be a press conference with cameras (apparently an unusual event) to record the dramatic moment. As you say, it turned out to be a damp squib.

Labour have been making wrong forecasts about growth and debt levels for the past several years. We need to be reminded of this - as Guy News has just done.

Vulture

I think we should be damned grateful to our marvellous PM Gordon Bruin - the pilot who weathered the storm.

Is it time for my medicine yet?

JONNY

Say what you like
The BBC online newspage is having a mini-orgasm over the figures.

G J Wyatt

Hey this is better than 0% growth!
And it's just the preliminary estimate - it might get better still!

TrevorsDen

It strikes me that there is a very real danger that growth will slip back next quarter - which would be terminal for labours election plans.

In so far as any boost 4th Q was based on brought forward spending, rather than worthwhile industrial production, there seems ample scope for a decline.

One wonders what some cabinet ministers, assured there would be meaningful growth in 4Q, are thinking right now. Despite some dumb assed questions on SKY I thought Osborne made his points well.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

So the recession is over. Bravo! I imagine that for a bsnker collecting his bonus or any of the other fat cats it never really happened. Carry on, Chancellor.

Ed P

As a recession is defined as two successive quarters without growth, why does just one quarter with (slight) growth signify the end of it?

General Zod

0.1% is within the margin of error, so they have obviously fudged the figure to make it positive. The reality is that the recession is not over, whatever the Brown Broadcasting Corporation's headlines might say.

2trueblue

Jonny, the BBC belong to Liebore, but even Sky has Liebore sleeping partners to tell it Liebores way.

Truely awful figures for reasons stated by all above. People are now getting their heads down just to survive, and the wallets are zipped, so the figure, even with margin of error will run into negative figures.
That accepted we will have to suffer the spin by Liebore on the BBC and SKY for a while yet. I really would like grown up, unbiased, real reporting. Bit too challenging for them, eh?

the shade of dr kelly

brown should call an early election before the revision of "growth" and his appearence before chilcott.

this would allow labour to play purely on the argument that the recovery is fragile and if the tories get in they will ruin it by making cuts too soon etc etc.

saw liam byrne on DP now warning of double dip under tory plans.

it is the only hope those shysters have got of narrowing the divide now.

oldtimer

Re the margin of error, the man from the ONS said that the estimate was based on 40% (c40,000) of the expected returns. Past experience has shown that this initial estimate could change by 0.1% or 0.2% either way - so it could go up as high as 0.3% or it could go down to 0.0% growth (to borrow a Brownie) or even as low as a continued recession at -0.1%.

It seems that the car scrappage scheme was a significant element in the quarter. No one seems to think that the 1st qtr of 2010 will look good. With the end of car scrappage, increased VAT, end of the Xmas spend and rising prices and interest rates the odds are that it will look bad. They are due to be published towards the end of April, just in time for a 6 May polling day, if that is what it will be.

On the economy Brown is between a rock and a hard place, whatever date he choses.

LLOYDJ

Can someone inform us of the tolerance band attached to the 0.1% estimate? I expect that it is at least 0.2%

Right Said Fred

Can someone check if Q1 growth figures have ever exceeded the preceeding Q4 growth. You would expect the Christmas figures to be greater. It would be interesting to predict the likely trajectory of growth (if any) next quarter

Robert Williams

Obnoxio above queries the Conservatives' ability to demonstrate Brown's shortcomings - "But will they? They seem completely unable to dent the man."

Cameron needs to accept Brown's unscrupulousness & a media that still appears to be in thrall to the man. Cameron pointed out at PMQs that the UK was the last G20 country still in recession, he then looked totally lost when Brown answered with a lie (Brown claiming Spain was a member of the G20) Cameron, instead of calling Brown on the lie, assumed he must have been inadequately briefed. & where were the howls from the media?

Marcher Baron

Ed P asked the question that's been troubling me; how can anyone say the recession has ended based on only one set of figures?

JONNY

I know 2trueblue
but it can't go on like this can it.
Surely even the Beeb will finally bite the bullet -
and start sucking up to their anticipated new masters. I'm watching Nick Robinson very closely.

The Bellman

Hmmmm. US 3Q09 GDP was initially estimated at 3.5%; then 2.8 and then to 2.2% on the second revision. The 'real' GDP figures will not be known for years, maybe decades: academics still argue over the figures for 1983.

But whether or not you believe the accuracy of the figures, GDP is a pretty poor way to measure the health of an economy. You might as well judge my 'wealth' by the car I drive, regardless of the terms - HP? Bank loan? Gambling spoils? - under which I obtained it.

DavidL

I am not sure about the Christmas effect. GDP compares like with like and even 2008 had a Christmas. What is clear is that the imposition of 17.5% VAT, the end of the car scrappage scheme (which might help our balance of payments), the increasing pressure on the public sector to cut expenditure albeit quietly, the adverse effect of the Bonus tax and the horrible weather in early January will all create head winds against GDP in Q1. This is very bad news for Labour but rather more importantly it is a disaster for the country. There had been some hopeful signs on Govt borrowing recently but this gives a minimal base to work from for any Chancellor. How can growth projections in the Budget be unaffected by this?

alex popplewell

awful number but one minor point on the above-investing in uk oplc isn't the same as investing in gordonomics as luckily lots of companies -particulaarly the larger ones-get revenue,profit and thus dividend paying capacity outside the uk.The FTSE all-share index gets about 65% international profits now,especially as the big domestic (illusory) profit source in banking has evaporated.still,the index peaked in a fervour of Y2K/Dotcom excitement in 1999,sothe point is still that neither the economy,nor investors in the UK have done well under Labour.usually the stats for performance of the market during labour parliamentary terms gets at least some lift because markets panic ahead of a labour election,leaving labour with a low base to operate from,but oddly that didn't really happen back in 1997...so much for things can only get better.

Paddy

Brown will talk his way out of it again.

There isn't one journalist who will challenge his figures and tell him they don't believe him.

Alun Reynolds

Growth of o.1% pah! If a business declared growth of 0.1% it would be discounted as margin of error in measurement. This is politial bollocks.

frank ceasar

It is no suprise that the country's economy is growing so slowly, and far behind other countries. The fact is, as recent figures have shown and we all ready know. Both the government and Gordon Brown are economically illatiate . They have neither a clue how market economies function, nor have a clue how to get us out of the mess they have created . Not only have we seen a complete Economic failure but we are witnessing a complete ideological failure and vacuum of ideas. It would be nice to think that The Tories recognised this and would offer a coherent strategy to get us out of this mess and as a country set us back on the path to prosperity , but as of yet there is is no indication they do so .

Philip Riley

Ed P, the answer to your question is actually in your question if you look carefully. A recession as you say is defined by two quarters of contraction, by definition then, as soon as you have one quarter of growth you do not have two quarters of contraction. That's not to say you won't have in the future of course.

logdon

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned McSnotty's picture.

AngloWelshDragon

Good point Logdon - and people used to say Bush looked like a chimp!

Ed P

Philip Riley - That cannot be true because, if next quarter's figures are negative, then, according to your theory, it would NOT be defined as "back in recession" (even though it would be obviously just that).