Fitaloon at MicroShaft

As the Telegraph reports, the GDP for Q4 2009 was this morning actually revised DOWN, yes DOWN.

However because it was actually an increase of 0.3 % on the revised DOWN value of earlier quarters in  2009 it appeared to be going up.

Initially the ONS thought GDP was £315,845m, it was in fact £315,712m (of course this is still an estimate). This means  the GDP was re-estimated DOWN 133m.

Why did the headline figure say it was 0.3% up an increase from 0.1%, well it turns out that earlier quarters have been revised DOWN as well. So the GDP increased in percentage figures over Q3 2009.  It also means we were in an even deeper recession than was thought.

Confused read the article in the Telegraph that tells it much better than I can.

Of course all this leads us to reflect that this is yet again Brown trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Earlier on today I noted that Fraser Nelson in the Spectator was showing us how Gordon Brown was trying to confuse us over deficit an debt, now they are trying to show a decrease as an increase.

The last words in the Telegraph article also note why we need to consider what the next real set of figures will show.

And just to add to our worries, a brief examination of the GDP figures (which are now more than three-quarters complete, so are pretty reliable), much of the growth (such as it was) was provided by retail, by car manufacture and sales, and by government expenditutre. It doesn’t take an economic genius to realise that these are all reliant on artificial props from the government (VAT cut, car scrappage scheme, brought-forward state spending) which will soon be, or have already been, withdrawn.

No wonder Alistair Darling was reluctant to spend much time basking in the apparent glory of these figures this morning. They are, I would say, more bad news than good.

Methinks it is Time for a Change

Don’t be fooled: GDP was actually revised down – Telegraph Blogs.

This article in the Guardian is seriously worrying if it is backed up by the release of figures tomorrow.

Forget a double dip. Britain may not have emerged from recession in late 2009 after all. Government figures released this morning showed a dramatic 6% fall in business investment in the final three months of the year, which all other things being equal would shave 0.5 points off output. Given that the initial estimate of growth in quarter four 2009 was just 0.1% , that’s not good news.

The even worse news is that a catastrophic 24% drop in investment over the past year leaves the economy in an enfeebled state as it attempts to recover from the deepest and longest recession since the 1930s. This, remember, is a recovery that is supposed to based on a rebalancing of growth from consumption to investment and exports. Fat chance, on the basis of today’s report.

Keep reading at the link below.

UK may not have emerged from recession after all | Analysis: Larry Elliott | Business | guardian.co.uk.

Macavity the Cat

With the  economy just having managed to push it’s snout out of the depths of recession and register a measly 0.1% rise in GDP during Q4 2009, we wonder what has happened to the “Saviour of the World” Gordon Brown.

It appears that having had a preview of the figures yesterday he found something a bit more interesting to do and buggered off to Northern Ireland leaving the fall man Alistair Darling to face the music back in London and to explain why we were the last of the G20 countries to manage the feat.

Now I’m sure that the talks in Northern Ireland are important as well but his ability to do a Macavity whenever there is bad news to be told is now becoming legend.

Will he slink back to Westminster for PMQ’s tomorrow or will he remain bunkered?

BBC News – UK economy emerges from recession.

Provisional figures show we may have come out of recession but inly just with GDP growing 0.1% in Q4 2009. A nat’s whisker and no more.

Recession over, new GDP figures show – Channel 4 News.

Figures to day will show that Britain has at last come out of the recession, the nation’s worst recession in more than 50 years. Only Labour could achieve yet another failure to understand how to run an economy and have managed to bankrupt us yet again and facing years of hard work until we are solvent again.

Unlike, as Gordon Brown forecast, are “we leading the world”,  we are trailing the world out of recession after being the only one of the Group of Seven nations officially to remain there after output bucked expectations and continued to shrink in the third quarter of last year.

Whether or not we sustain any growth will be another question , with many forecasting a double-dip recession fro the UK.

Remember Gordon “Saved the Word”.

Britain set to make belated recession exit | Reuters.