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| | UK heading back into recession, says OECDPage 1 of 5 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) | The UK has slipped back into recession after the economy contracted in the first quarter of 2012, an influential think-tank warned today.
Gross domestic product (GDP) - a broad measure for the total economy - is on course to have fallen by about 0.1 per cent in the three months to the end of March, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said.
The gloomy forecast comes after official figures revealed the economy contracted by 0.3 per cent in the final quarter of 2011, which was worse than the previous estimate of a 0.2 per cent fall.
A decline in the first three months of 2012 will mean the UK is officially back in recession, which is defined as two quarters in a row of declines.
The OECD also warned the recovery for the world's biggest economies would be fragile, with the outlook for Europe "very weak"
Source - The Independent 30/03/12.
Well as an SME Owner, it's felt like that since November 2011. The question is, how can we stop the decline? What needs to happen? | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/30/2012 1:03:41 AM | A lot of the problems that we currently have in the UK are not helped by the media in this country.
Bad news sells papers and they have had a field day over the last five years, talking down the housing market and pretty-well causing the housing crash.
The economy is cremated on a daily basis on TV news; the population is repeatedly told 'we've no money for butter', so our High Streets are empty (I know, I'm looking at one outside as I type this).
This Government is inept (coalitions usually are) and lurching from one crisis to another, which begets confusion and distrust.
We need huge inward investment in civil engineering projects (the Olympic Village is nearly finished - we need a new big project/roads/infrastructure programme). Civils are the real driving force in a time of recession.
Business rates are killing industry and the High Street, we need a fairer and more even way of raising revenues from small enterprises (those with less than 125k turnover).
Unnecessary business expenses penalise enterprise - it is patently ridiculous that a limited company turning over less than 50k has to spend 1k on accountancy fees - the whole way that small businesses and start-ups are treated is ludicrous and is killing enterprise and employment.
We need to adress the immigrant /fake refugee problem urgently.
We need to look very hard at Foreign aid/subsidy & ensure that we get realistic returns.
I'm not convinced that a change of Government would achieve anything much other than more uncertainty.
Our current administration seems to have jammed its collective head very firmly into the sand and is patiently waiting for it all to go away. Unfortunately 'doing nothing' is not usually a good plan.......
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/30/2012 1:07:08 AM |
The question is, how can we stop the decline?
Not a lot, as we can't go back in time and stop everyone who voted Labour in for over 10 years, because that's when it started, no point in blaming the libcons for something that started before they go in | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/30/2012 1:14:00 AM | | We could have a petrol panic buying spree just to up the tax receipts just at the right time to avert the technical double dip recession! | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/30/2012 1:18:41 AM | We should also stop throwing money at other countries ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17558417
Pull out of Afghanistan now, that would save billions in money and priceless savings in our armed forces causalities | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/30/2012 1:19:30 AM |
We could have a petrol panic buying spree just to up the tax receipts just at the right time to avert the technical double dip recession!
Like it
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/30/2012 1:39:53 AM | A few years ago (2009) the Australian Government "printed money"....basically.
They gave $950 (about £600 these days) to nearly every resident to kickstart the economy. The goverment asked that residents spend the money and not save it.
To immediately stimulate the economy in the shortest possible time, five groups of one-off cash bonuses will be paid in March and April 2009.
These five key bonuses include a:
Tax Bonus for Working Australians of up to $950 paid to every eligible Australian worker earning $100,000 or less. This will support up to 8.7 million individuals.
$950 Single Income Family Bonus to support 1.5 million families with one main income earner.
$950 Farmer’s Hardship Bonus paid to around 21,500 drought affected farmers and farm dependent small business owners receiving exceptional circumstances related income support.
$950 per child Back to School Bonus to support 2.8 million children from low- and middle-income families.
$950 Training and Learning Bonus paid to students and people outside of the workforce returning to study to help with the costs of education and training.
Not sure that it worked so well long term though as their economy has slowed and the Australian government is currently under pressure to do the whole thing again. | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/30/2012 2:00:48 AM | | The best years of were 97-2007 .Things have changed quite a bit since then.China got very very rich,Brazil is being better managed and also getting very rich .Even poor African countries are getting rich,places like Angola and Uganda are growing rapidly.The ponzi schemes of wall street and similar streets have been exposed .This is a far different day from the days of colonisation and imperialist rule.No longer are foreign companies getting rich at the expense of companies in other localities.There is no such thing as going back,we can only go forward or die . | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/30/2012 2:09:40 AM | Not sure if that's the answer Jack, but let's face it, it's what the Government have been doing for the banks and describing it as 'easing'.
I'm in favour of giving vouchers instead of money for benefit , for 2 reasons ;
1. It forces the idle and feckless to actually spend their money on basics for survival rather than fags and booze. Yes it's a generalisation used as an example. Ally the vouchers plan to discounts on certain lines to families on benefit, as well as cheaper internet access for job searches etc. It just needs Ministers to get together with commerce to make it happen. It'll also save a hell of a lot of money on the benefit bill.
2. It'll stop benefit money leaving the country , never to return. One of the reasons we keep having to increase the money supply, is the sheer volume of cash leaving the EU region never to return. Or, am I the only one to notice the explosion of money shops?
As the 2nd Poster mentions, SME's , which are the base of the economy pyramid , are getting shafted left right and centre. We pay our taxes, we don't have offshore havens and we're getting screwed. Vince Cable God bless him, is trying his best, but he's getting shafted by Osborne too. We need stability before we can create jobs . We're also hamstrung by a paucity of MP's now in Parliament, who understand exactly how business works, because they've been there and done it.
I'm not prepared to just throw my hands up in the air and say "I can't" , I'll die first. But, we need leadership, and a Business Plan for UK PLC.
Edit .
Even poor African countries are getting rich,places like Angola and Uganda are growing rapidly
Yes they are. About the one good thing Cyclops did when he was in power, was pushing to wipe out African Debt. I have found in the last FY , my business has skewed 60/40 in favour of exports, with Kenya, Uganda, Morocco, Tunisia and South Sudan making marked bounds. Lots of enquiries coming in from Brazil and Venezuela too for medium range 'British' consumer goods. I'll need to take a trip down there. | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/30/2012 3:03:52 AM | We could have a petrol panic buying spree just to up the tax receipts just at the right time to avert the technical double dip recession!
the suckers fell for it, if they said there's a shortage of pepper the dumb public would buy it. | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/30/2012 7:42:33 AM | | People wont use more petrol just because they bought it. They just won't buy any for a few weeks. Its like the buy one get one free scenario. Buying 2 bottles for price of one will up the receipts this week and kill sales for same product next week. | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/31/2012 12:23:08 AM | > it's felt like that since November 2011.
To me its felt like it since the early 1980's, and ever since then the country has slowly slipped further and further into decline.
> We need huge inward investment in civil engineering projects (
Agreed, how about a few new eco towns..
> Business rates are killing industry and the High Street,
Indeed, just who is responsible for that so I can complain personally to them ?
(Previously when I've asked this question on other forums, no one knew..)
> We need to adress the immigrant /fake refugee problem urgently.
Agreed.
> 1. It forces the idle and feckless to actually spend their money on basics for
> survival rather than fags and booze.
A good idea.
> 2. It'll stop benefit money leaving the country , never to return.
Perhaps something like a local currency might do that ?
> SME's , which are the base of the economy pyramid , are getting shafted left
> right and centre.
Agreed they need a helping hand as much as possible to help kick start the economy.
I also think we could benefit from abolishing the minimum wage, as at the moment there are companies that do employ often illegal immigrant labour and pay them 1/10th of the legal wage, they get no rights, and legit businesses cannot compete and go to the wall because of it.
It also makes it harder for any start-ups to establish themselves due to the high wage bill at the beginning.
I rather admire efforts like Huaxi in China, though I think we could do better with more automation ourselves.
Job sharing I think is another practical solution, though it needs to go hand in hand with worker supplied housing. (Something I hear happens in China for example.) So that folk can afford to live on less wages because they have free housing.
It strikes me as strange that half the population work 40+ hours so to speak, and the other half wants work and doesn't work at all, so why not everyone work 20 hours a week instead :-) | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/31/2012 1:10:56 AM | There are a number of things that could be done to mitigate the effects of the current economic crisis. IMO the most effective, easiest to implement and the most cost beneficial would be the introduction of a 30 hour week here in the UK, even if done on a voluntary basis across the country. Coupled with an elimination of PAYE and a flat tax replacement, the result would transform the current economy and end this downturn faster than anything else possibly could.
According to the ONS there are 29 million jobs in the UK each working average of 35 hours. Reduce this to 30 hours and there will potentially be up to 15 million 10 hour jobs created as if by magic. When this idea was trialled at several major UK employers in 2009 it was done on a purely voluntary basis and yet over 80% of workers volunteered to the reduction in working hours. Even if this change was to be on a nationwide voluntary basis, a 50% participation rate would be a reasonable expectation and would still create some 7.5 million 10 hour jobs appearing in the job centers overnight.
Even at the minimum wage a ten hour job would pay enough wages to completely eliminate any and all claims for JSA other than for the shortest of times. This would save the country £4 billion each year immediately. There would be even more money saved from housing benefits, disability benefits and several other benefits plus a masive step change improvement in our national health with two of the most costly illnesses, stress and obesity being considerably eased thus saving tens of billions more for the taxpayer.
If any person who might have reduced their hours comes later to find later they need to increase their earnings again, be it for a short time or more permanently, they would still have the advantage of having several million remaining 10 hour jobs in the job center for them to take up to meet their long or short term needs.
Having jobs in the job center is the key to ending this recession and reducing the working week to 30 hours is the easiest way to put them there........... | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/31/2012 2:24:27 AM | I don't believe we ever made it out of recession, just fiddled figures and the extra money pumped into the banks made it look a little better for a while.
And I don't think dumb and dumber(Cameron and Clegg)have got a clue how to turn things around.
Guess we all will have to eat at least one pasty a day from now on. 
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/31/2012 3:22:25 AM | Graffiti, you make some good points. However, the artificially high cost of living in the UK , produced by a combination of factors confounds your argument.
The cost is artificially high, because the entire country got into a Ponzi scheme on housing , round about the time Thatcher sold off council homes. Suddenly houses stopped being homes and became investment plans. As with any pyramid scheme, those at the top make all the money, and those at the bottom get rinsed.
Most of the continent treat houses as homes, rental for example is particularly high in Germany. Santander built an awful lot of homes to own in Spain , and ooops ,bucking a national trend doesn't work. However, there's now a lot of recently cheap housing in Spain.
One of the other reasons for the artificially high cost of living in the UK, is we are getting f*****g rinsed by Corporations on consumer goods, and then Osborne whangs 20% purchase tax on top. Do a simple google shopping search on washing machines for example. Then do a comparison on google.com , google.fr , google.de, google.es. In some cases, the difference is enough to make you want to call some head offices, and scream obscenities down the phone till you get hoarse. The Common Market was supposed to prevent this happening, with a standardisation of prices across the EU. Corporations just ignore this.
My job is effectively to play those prices against each other and the manufacturer , something I'm good at.
The HCOL in the UK, means that whilst 30 hours in principle sounds a jolly good idea, it can't and won't work, because people don't earn enough to keep them in the things they've become accustomed to, because in the UK, we've grown soft and idle.
Get the retail Price Index down , your idea might have a chance.
Personally, I think dropping VAT to 10% for 6 months will provide the kickstart . However, as a previous poster pointed out, those at the top haven't a clue. A Prime Minister who has never done a proper job in his life, and a Chancellor who hasn't either.
A Chancellor whose sole qualification is a degree in Modern History . What? We won WW2 , We nearly went Nuclear in the 60's, America lost Vietnam, We took the Falklands back. Degree please. How the hell was that allowed to ever come to pass? Meanwhile the one man in the Government who DOES know what needs to be done moneywise is shunted sideways and ignored, unless he opens his mouth to point out skullduggery, and is promptly fallen on by Cameron protecting his job prospects after Parliament.
We need a plan, a transparent plan we can all agree on, that Business and the populace can get behind | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/31/2012 8:29:49 AM | The system in the UK is over complicated to the extreme. Am I entitled to child benefit, family tax credit ,pension benefits, disabled benefits etc etc etc.
Lets look at a simple example of how everything could be simplifed in one stroke.
Figures are examples only.
Every adult would be entitled to £5000 a year from the government. Full stop. Nothing else. Everything you earnt would be on top of that would be taxed at 50%.
In one swoop you would kill every other benefit, pension, housing allowance etc.
If you didn't want to work or couldn't work or were retired you would get £5000 regardless as JSA, pension whatever. If you then made the effort to do extra you would pay half into the system. No extra for breeding 10 kids. No penalties for not wanting to work. A guaranteed pension which you could top up by working. No loss of benefit (£5000) by working in part time or temporary jobs hopping in and out of work. No forms to fill in every time circumstances changed. No opportunity to make false claims.
And those who couldn't or wouldn't work would still have an income.
By the time someone had earn't £10,000 they would have paid £5000 back into the system and would therefore have the basic £5000 plus £5000 from earnings to spend.
The incentive to do even the smallest amount of work would be there. | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/31/2012 9:22:48 AM | I thought we were in recession months ago 
I haven't seen any improvements since the last 'recession' my nearest town is dire, we have lost 2 well known shops this year alone, the local hospital is making 60 plus redundant, local shopping centre is in administration and that is just the start of it.
I don't think making the poorest of society poorer is the way forwards, most on benefits only get the basics and many are desperate for work. | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/31/2012 9:58:20 AM | food keeps going up and up ...... not a good thing if your a single person , on your own :=( ..... noticed wine and beer have gone up to ,  | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/31/2012 10:37:36 AM |
food keeps going up and up ...... not a good thing if your a single person , on your own :=( ..... noticed wine and beer have gone up to
I would be needing to earn 20k a year to be able to afford to live on my own as a single person with no kids I won't get any help at all, there aren't many jobs about compared to the number of unemployed let alone jobs paying more than 16k ish a year unless it is specialist but I can't afford to go to college to become an engineer etc as they won't pay any benefits to someone who is aiming to improve their qualifications and prospects.
Used to buy some free range eggs from Tesco they have gone up 10p in the last week, just one of the things I have noticed. | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 3/31/2012 10:55:12 AM | i live on my own , as a single person i sometimes find it difficult :-( just walking around the supermarket yesterday i noticed they keep wacking 10p /20p on here and there , its every month or so ive noticed they do this , cant even get a bottle of wine now under £5 :-( its a joke , its been ok march/april , the council tax free months have helped , i hate paying council tax  ggrrrrrr , i did a month living on beans on toast once :-((( | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 4/1/2012 2:44:49 AM | > Every adult would be entitled to £5000 a year from the government.
Also known as Guaranteed minimum income.
It would certainly be interesting to do a trial and see how it went, so far the only real trial I've read of saw practically all the men buy beer making equipment and get drunk, whilst the women started up small businesses.
I remember reading once that 52% of government income is spent trying to figure out how to spend the other 48%..
So cutting paperwork I reckon would be a good thing..
Though I think the amount everyone gets should be tied to tax income in some way, so if the country gets richer, it goes up, but likewise, if we all become extra lazy and earn less, it should go down.. (Eg. amount of pie divided by number of people in the country.)
> We need a plan, a transparent plan we can all agree on, that Business and the
> populace can get behind
I don't think any plan you will ever see everyone agree on, I think the best you can do is to choose a plan that is likely to work better than others. (Based ideally on trials to see which plan actually works better in practice.. after all, we have MMORPG's to play with these days, so its not like we don't have Guinea pigs to test things on, before testing it on a real town.)
> it can't and won't work, because people don't earn enough to keep them in the things
> they've become accustomed to,
I think it could work if housing costs are taken out, then folk would end up with roughly the amount they would have otherwise got at the end of the day.
Though it wouldn't be a bad idea to supply a few basic's such as say electric at a lower price, or even free.. (Charge business customers, but give domestic customers a free allowance, charge them if they go above it, that way it would encourage conservation.)
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 4/1/2012 4:05:17 AM | The best years of were 97-2007 .Things have changed quite a bit since then.China got very very rich,Brazil is being better managed and also getting very rich .Even poor African countries are getting rich,places like Angola and Uganda are growing rapidly.The ponzi schemes of wall street and similar streets have been exposed .This is a far different day from the days of colonisation and imperialist rule.No longer are foreign companies getting rich at the expense of companies in other localities.There is no such thing as going back,we can only go forward or die .
Please can you ellaborate on this Ponzi scheme because I fail to see it. I trade the stock market daily and the only thing I see is supply and demand. People buy and sell based on the performance of individual firms aswell as sector peformance and currency / economic strength.
The reason Brazil and other countries are growing is because they are offering sound investments. For example: I am invested in a South African water treatment, why? because I know that the SA government has no choice but to offer a contract for acid mine treatment. I am invested in Falklands oil companies because there's oil sitting in the ground. There is nothing Ponzi about this or any other public traded companies, nobody is lying, you are not allowed to lie on the stock exchange, if you do you'll end up in the cupboard. | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 4/4/2012 3:04:00 AM | That is a very insightfull post OneOnOwn and is very close to the new universal credit that this government is bringing in. I personally think it will be the defining piece of legislation this government will be remembered for in years to come and believe it will be a massive benefit to everyone in the country.
The universal credit will not be the £5,000 you suggest but will be a figure amounting to the combined amounts of benefits, for all criteria, housing, employment, children etc, that the government believe are the minimum levels a person needs to survive on. Every person in the country will be eligable for payments, calculated by an agreed formula, dependent upon their specific circumstances. The country will save many millions through this much simpler system and those who need to claim benefits will never again be faced with the prospect of being called benefit scroungers as everyone will be on benefits of one type or another. Another advantage of the new universal credit is that the many thousands of people who miss out on benefits they are currently entitled to will now receive those payments in full.
I do not know if you were aware of the universal credit when you posted but I am impressed that you came up with such a wise suggestion if you wasn't............. | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 4/4/2012 12:59:34 PM | Well before one tries to get out of a hole it might be a good idea to examine the hole, and maybe stop the water filling it up. Death after all cures all ills.
We are printing money, paper money, with the result it is invested in commodities, thus they rise in price. Industry, well there is the city of London, the fraud capital of the globe, where money laundering and scams are legal.
So we are good at swindling/making money out of nothing, and war. We are about to sell of the roads, maybe and the post office, and not forgetting the NHS, privitising the prisons, and anything else one can flog for a quick cheap buck. So its a fire sale where friends of the connected, add to their piles of cash.
Fortunately the banks always play the same game, flooding the place with easy money, withdrawing it, creating price inflation, through commodity manipulation. Enjoy wages frozen for the plebs, and money grabbed by the governing elites for the glory of the banks, so we can all get deeper in debt..
The media, regarding the rest of the world is silent unless a riot takes place, as the ex executives of Goldman Sachs now run most of Europe, so sod democracy, and welcome to the brave new world, where you the citizen are a potential threat, and like the Stazi in Eastern Germany, you are being watched, and hearsay, grudges and the rest recorded as fact just in case you come up, or friend s of yours do, on the radar. Everyone is a threat if questioning the competence of the government is the subject, it shows dissent.
The wonder of the fuel calamity, was not anything to do with the fuel, or the potential strike, it was that the plebs reacted immediately, and did as they were told in the way they were told. Its good to be an obedient citizen in a changing world apparently full of artificially created threats. I lived in London through the IRA spraying the place with machine guns and bombs. They knew about havoc, and the government feels like sowing such seeds now too, through the media propaganda machine. Tell the idiots the minimum information necessary, as they do not need to know. So well done the fuel sheep, and don't forget to grass up people you do not like or feel uncomfortable with. And the phone taps which are happening anyway, but now they want to stretch their muscles, should add to creating victims out of nothing but rumor, like in East Germany.
Democracy is a sham, its just another method of screwing the population of their wealth, or have I missed a trick here and there. Will we get out of it, hope not, need wage and debt slaves don't we, not forgetting the masses of new unemployed, and the women sent back into the kitchens for child rearing and male domination again. Make one proud to see it all falling apart. Compliant sheep, a model for the rest of us, to look up to. Lets hope that nuking Iran, getting nasty with China in a decade, and the rest of us playing the monkey on the back of the USA empire building, based on defense and not aggression, will get us through.
Shame that the British people like in the first world war, loins ruled by morons, what a disaster, and god save the banks! | |
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| UK heading back into recession, says OECD
Posted: 4/23/2012 4:44:52 AM | I think the only solution is to stop banks creating money, from nothing through loans and for the government to stop borrowing money off the markets simply in order for us to have a means of exchange.
If a government can issue a bond, then it can issue a bill or pound note. Both are just promisary notes. In short we need debt free money like we used to have some years ago.
http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/
some more info here ^ | |
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