Posts Tagged Office of National Statistics
Fiddling while Rome burns
Posted by Stephen Clarke in Economics on 26/07/2011
Today the ONS released the latest quarterly GDP figures, indicating that the British economy had grown by 0.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2011. The ONS estimated that growth could have been approximately 0.5 per cent higher if it wasn’t for the ‘special events’ of the royal wedding, Japanese earthquake, Olympic ticket sales and the unusually hot weather in April. It is highly questionable that all of these events had a significant, or any impact upon growth. Furthermore, focusing on the quarterly growth figure diverts attention away from long-term economic problems, evident in the underlying statistics.
