Stronger than expected growth

toco

Labour should reflect on the financial mess they left the coalition caused by Gordon Brown's inexcusable and reckless spending on everything from aircraft carriers to luxury homes for immigrants rather than seek to shift the blame.The irony is Labour's trades union owners are paid to cause havoc in self justification of the dues they extract from union members.If they behaved honestly rather than cynically their members would leave in droves.

Mike Thomas

There is a good argument that the markets had already priced in a change of government.

Now we are seeing that the wider economy perhaps did not. Competent governance is a confidence builder and I see this as vindication of that.

I think the effect of cuts has been overplayed, what it will do is fire the starting gun on increased competition in the private sector which can only produce more economic growth.

Blue Laguna

That will upset the BBC.

Victor Southern

So much for the prophecy of the Left's doomsayers who talk about double-dip recession as they a] it is inevitable and b] that they understand such a concept.

Moriarty

I've just heard Alan Johnson on Sky complaining about the forthcoming NI increases. Who writes the Labour script? Winston Smith?

Ricky

The socialist Doom Meisters at the BBC are furiously spinning the story that whilst there is growth, the future looks bleak. Every single BBC outlet is on anti-cuts and anti-Coalition overload. It appears their idea of balance is a debate between the Hard Left and the Left. The BBC is continuing to talk amongst themselves. Time to dismantle this subversive organisation.

GDT

Amazed to see how the MSM are reporting this. Talk about talking the country down. Growth is 2x what was expected. Didn't Labour say the £6BN in cuts announced in the Emergency Budget would lead us into Armageddon?
It is a shame that the MSM didn't critique the previous administration in the way it has this one.
Maybe if more questions had been asked we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.

davidk

Nonsense commentary here. These figures demonstrate a clear lack of confidence in our economy and the beginning of the dreaded L-shaped recession.

Robert Eve

When has Labour ever been credible?

Dimoto

Perhaps more interesting than the actual (preliminary) figure, is how the media have reported it.
Clear disappointment at the BBC.
The Indy left looking foolish after yesterday's article predicting more doom, and most revealingly, the Mail, which seems to have copied and pasted large sections directly from the Indy - see the bit about "cracks showing in the recovery".
This seems to have been added by an editor and doesn't even chime with the rest of the article.
The Daily Mail - produced by lefties for the chav and airhead tendencies.

AndyinBrum

Excuse me? It's all been about the double dip recession, surely that's a n . Typical new labour schooling messing up the alphabet.

JR

So the BBC headline this morning is that growth is slower the expected and the double dip is coming, beware everyone, you are all going to be in a work-house as part of the tories final solution (thanks Hunt and Toynbee).

No double dip, duoble the expected growth. Take that.

I have no prob with the BBC saying slower then expected growth as a headline, if that is the consensus of the think tanks, businesses et al, but it wasn't it was a mixed, some said faster growth others said slower, and it turns out to be faster.

The BBC spouted this stuff all morning, impartiality please. The problem with these little rantings, is they make me feel better, but do the BBC actually pay any notice. No, they just keep spinning for Labour.

Chuck Unsworth

"it should play well for Osborne & Co."

Certainly doesn't for Al Beeb, or the lovely Polly Tyonbee. Such an outpouring of doom and gloom, eh? Maybe it's just a manifestation of their terror of the axe currently poised over their heads. I do hope so.

normanc

The inflation point is an interesting one and glad the Spectator are taking it up. Considering the 5% inflation we have (could be more depending on what you look at) the silence in the MSM about this is deafening.

In my simplistic mind we should be aiming for growth > inflation which implies an increase in living standards, and vice versa.

Let's do the Scooby Doo hand waving thing and look 2 years down the line. If you are a public sector employee on a pay freeze for the next 2 years and inflation is at 5% for those 2 years what are you going to be looking for (after an effective pay cut of 10%)? A 2% pay rise? I think not. How about that NHS real terms spending increas?

Which may cause the savings from the cuts to be less than expected.

TrevorsDen

I think the OBR pointed out that growth will be slow over the next few years. So we seem to be reflecting this.

Lets not forget that under labour the growth looked good only because the previous quarter had been downgraded.

These figures need to be treated with caution. We can only be sure of difficult conditions for the next 2 years.

dorothy wilson

Ricky: Have you noticed how many times the BBC starts bulletins with: "the Government has been defending ..."? The implication - and probably the intention - is that the government is always on the back foot.

Dimoto: The Mail's managing editor is a big friend of Brown. The paper seems to be trying to have one leg on either side of the fence at present. The danger of that is splinters in the backside!

TGF UKIP

"Where next", through the floor to stagflation, old boy. The economy is now in freefall.

Oh and by the way, if you're going to refer to anything in the Times you will need to flesh it out a bit more - a link just hits the paywall.