David Craig, on June 18th, 2015Yesterday Osborne was crowing over the fact that 43,000 more people found jobs last month as the economy continues to grow. And looking at the economic devastation crushing socialist Southern Europe, we should be very glad indeed that the British electorate stepped back from the brink of disaster last month and rejected mad Ed MiniBrand’s plan for bankrupting our country.
This week I was in London and the amount of money being spent in shops, restaurants and on property is truly staggering. But there’s a chart (which I hope readers will find interesting) which suggests that beneath the headline good news, quite a lot of people are people are not eating out every day in expensive restaurants, buying designer clothes and purchasing multimillion pound homes:
The chart shows both employment and earnings. The blue line, measured against the left hand axis in millions of people, shows the total number of people aged 16 and over in employment over the preceding three months. The red line, measured against the right hand axis in pounds, shows the average weekly earnings adjusted for inflation (so they are in today’s prices), excluding bonuses and arrears.
What does the chart show? Employment growth since we passed the pre-crisis peak in late 2012 has been at a faster pace than before the crisis, leading to new employment records being set almost every month. Although the April figures were slightly worse than March, this is unlikely to be anything more than a temporary blip. However, many of the new jobs must be poorly paid as real average earnings are still well below the peak in 2009 (by almost £30 per week), although they have been growing strongly since June last year.
So, some good news on employment. Moreover, this will hopefully lead to reduced spending on benefits. But when you consider that the top earners have managed to hugely increase their earnings in spite of the financial collapse and recession, there must be a lot of people out there who are really struggling.
Oh, and in the Times today there’s a story that’s so absurd you couldn’t have made it up. Apparently the economically-illiterate, financially-incontinent Ed Balls – the man who helped the useless sociopath Broon waste £1.5trn of our money and almost bankrupt Britain – is heading off to Harvard for a year to research “financial stability”.
Well, Charles Dickens’ Mr Micawber has already taught us all Ed Balls ever needs to learn about financial stability:
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Really simple. There is a difference between gross g.d.p. & net g.d.p. The country as a whole appears better off but the individual is worse off. But then again I didn’t vote for uncontrolled mass immigration, multi-culturalism & unsustainable public sector salaries & pensions. This whole house of cards will fall to sh*t, it really can’t end any other way.
Echoes of yesterday’s as well as today’s blog, just heard on Radio4 how a young doctor and her physicist husband cannot obtain a mortgage on account of their unavoidable student debts, which they are resolutely albeit inevitably slowly,paying off. The female doctor’s actual take-home pay equates to around £12 per hour! Not a lot for someone who may well be first in line to save your life! With a grandchild about to enter medical school and likely to emerge some 6 years hence with debts for tuition and subsistence in the region of £70K, I truly despair. There isn’t money in the family to subsidise the youngsters’ years in higher education and their native country, the UK, doesn’t give a toss. Never mind, we must be doing something right somewhere, since it appears there’s plenty in the kitty to provide housing benefits, unemployment and child benefit to our fellow British adherents to the Religion of Peace, while they are being nurtured in the doctrine of ISIS. I can only endorse the prediction of doom in Simon’s final sentence.
keen reader I used to live in Croydon it had lots of Muslims , White, Brown , Black most of the women had way over the average number of Children. No doubt many able to do so through benefits.
Population increase has driven housing costs up. The couple you mention may end up going to somewhere like Australia. What the Government is running is dis-eugenics .
As for the size of the economy that is because there are more people doing things – all the migrants add to our food and energy import bills. A few years back Woolworths, Comet, HMV all had a bigger economy then what 99p stores had. Based on turnover but that was not the same as profit. They like the UK where running a trading deficit.
Bloody hell. The number of hypocrites.
I suspect if you were to take a straw poll of Muslims, a large proportion would be taking benefits that only work because of the country their in and then an again not-too-small fraction of these would be condoning jihadists who attack the “superficial materialism”.
On a separate note, to highlight the Isl*misation of this country, I was told while eating a mentos that I “should be fasting”. Note- I’m mixed race, Christian family and we give far more to this country in taxes than we take out (no benefits, no state schools).
Enough is enough.