Economic factors

It’s funny the way the cards fall, isn’t it? A week ago we were told that new car sales in the UK had exceeded their previous high before the last recession.

A couple of days later, it was revealed that the vast bulk of those sales had been made to people who had received large compensation payments from the banks, after having been sold dishonest financial instruments. Then we were told that the 2014 growth in the UK economy was being uprated to 2.7 per cent, making the UK one of the the world’s fastest growing post-recession economies… and finally, a few days after that, we were given the news that the growth in the UK economy was being driven solely by internal domestic retail purchase. Exports – the key to GDP and growth – were still flat-lining. Doesn’t that worry anyone?

Is it possible that the economic surge has been driven solely by one-off compensation payments for marginally criminal levels of financial mis-selling, and once that is spent we’ll hit the buffers again? Could politicians manufacture a fake recovery? You’d better believe it. They won’t tell you, of course, because they want us to shuffle passively to the polling stations in 2015 and vote them all back into power, and think no further ahead than that. Come back Bill Jamieson; all is forgiven.

David Fiddimore

Calton Road

Edinburgh