9 ms·

UK Fell into Recession in 2023

82 points by okasaki 3y ago

ilikerashers 3y ago
UK feels like it's been in recession for years. London seems to be improving though so hopefully it lifts the rest of the country.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  There really isn't much past evidence for that. Many of UK's cities have been rotting away while London was booming.
  - dangerwill 3y ago
    Yup, and London specifically is famous for this relationship with the rest of England + Wales. It's pretty interesting (and depressing) how London has become an Ur-example of internal brain drain
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      I mean, that's the entire reason behind the global rural-to-urban migration that's been going on for well... centuries at this point. It's just more pronounced in the UK (and I'd expect South Korea) because London is such a dominant city in the UK.
      - rantallion 3y ago
        It's a shame that the exodus from London prompted by the Covid lockdowns didn't last. Perhaps we might have seen at least some equalisation across the country. Alas, anything outside of the M25 might as well be another country as far as Westminster is concerned.
        OJFord 3y ago
        Didn't last in what sense? Egress didn't continue(/ramp up) or significantly reversed?
      - rsynnott 3y ago
        In most places it happens to _more than one city_, though. London's a bit of an oddity (you see this in some smaller countries, but the UK's probably the biggest example).
    - impish9208 3y ago
      What is an “Ur-example”?
      - foldr 3y ago
        https://blogs.transparent.com/german/the-german-prefix-ur/ https://blogs.transparent.com/german/the-german-prefix-ur/
        noelwelsh 3y ago
        Interesting. I assumed Ur came from the Sumerian city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur It was one of the first cities in the world, and 30-ish years ago I was taught it was the first.
        OJFord 3y ago
        So it's not actually correctly used here? ('an Ur-anything' - e.g. 'an earliest example' as above - would never make sense for one thing?) I don't understand the intended meaning that's different from just 'example' here.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Cancellation of parts of HS2 (after most of the money has been spent) are of course intended to worsen that.
- M2Ys4U 3y ago
  Apparently there has been seven quarters of zero or negative growth in real GDP per capita, at least according to this tweet citing Bloomberg: https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1758062742865330410 https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1758062742865330410
  - gruez 3y ago
    Not just a tweet, this seems to be confirmed by the ONS as well: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/timeseries/ihxw/pn2 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/times...
- PaulKeeble 3y ago
  That is the rising inequality. The economy doing better (or worse) really doesn't matter when 95% of people have been getting relatively poorer quickly for the past 15 years and somewhat for over 40 years. The economy doing well or not really doesn't impact anyone but the asset wealthy at this stage, the average person can't afford their bills.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    Every development economist has said unequivocally that GDP growth alone is not a reliable measure of economic well-being. Usually this was thought to apply only to poor countries, where inequality was very high as the industrial sectors (where GDP growth mostly came from) were heavily concentrated in a few hands. It wasn't as much the case in rich countries where labour was better organized and had a stronger bargaining position when negotiating pay, so GDP growth did feed through to higher wages. That seems to have stopped in the rich world since the late 2000s. FTSE 100 company profits are up, yet they're pulling out every trick in the book to keep wages at poverty levels.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Can you provide some details (re: changes in London) for somebody who knows relatively little of England?
  - pjc50 3y ago
    "What do they know of England, who only England know?" -- Kipling (often quoted to make a point about the parochialism of a lot of English politics and its inability to compare against other, distant, foreign places such as Manchester)
  - ilikerashers 3y ago
    London just seems to be getting busier again. Trains are busy in the morning, lots of people out and about, restaurants full, and recruiters are starting to ping again on LinkedIn. Given it's been at a low ebb since the pandemic, there is a bit more buzz about the city again. That said, there could be a huge collapse coming later this year but after so much negativity for so long, things may change. The new government should help that (even if they don't do anything!).
- drcongo 3y ago
  You think it might "trickle down"?
- rsynnott 3y ago
  I think if you considered London and the rest separately, the rest probably _has_ been in recession for years.
harryvederci 3y ago
Finally, I can start a startup! https://paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html https://paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html
- roenxi 3y ago
  Yeas and no. It is probably a good time to be working on a startup. But the UK has serious energy problems; I'm a squeaky wheel on the topic but their per capita energy figures are estimated to have dropped 30% from peak [0]. You can't startup your way out of a hole like that, someone serious needs to do some capital investment. The UK's energy policy is a sick joke. A startup involved in helping people to live energy efficiently would probably go great and be a real boon to the people; but it isn't addressing the root cause of the problem here. The squeeze is real. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab=chart&country=~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Article linked in GP doesn't argue you should start a startup to fix the bad economy though, it's just arguing it's a good time to start your startup whatever it is. Unless you leave the country, the 'serious energy problems', whatever caused the bad economy, and anything else in the country are still going to be present if you don't start a startup?
kypro 3y ago
I don't know how this is possible. State pensions and universal credit went up 10% last year and will be going up another ~8% this year. I understand inflation has high, but most people have a lot more money coming in to make up for that... Are people just deciding not to spend their extra income? Everyone I know seems to be doing fairly well right now honestly, especially now that energy prices are coming down. The job market isn't great, but that's really the only thing that I've seen that looks recessionary? And either way unemployment is still low.
- trollied 3y ago
  > I understand inflation has high, but most people have a lot more money coming in to make up for that... Do they? I certainly haven't had an inflation-matching pay rise.
  - LandR 3y ago
    My salary in the last few years have jumped from 48k to 54k to 75k (and now have £6-£7k of extra income too, in interest etc) But I had to move jobs 3 times in 2 years to get those raises. And honestly, it still doesn't feel like enough. Tell me 5-10 years ago I'd earn £75k and I'd think that was going to be amazing, now a £75k salary kinda just feels like an average salary. And I have no kids! I don't know how people on average salaries with children are coping at all.
    - mytailorisrich 3y ago
      Come on, 75k (nevermind 6k on top) with no children... That is extremely good, probaly the top 5% in the country. Median income is about 35k, which means half the people earn less and you earn more than double that with less expenses.
      - foldr 3y ago
        It's good relatively because a lot of people in the UK are very poor. In London (which is probably where you are if you're getting paid that much) £75k does not get you particularly far.
throwaway4good 3y ago
At the moment you have recession in Germany, Japan and the UK. While there is growth in the US, India and China. Wonder how long this will last …
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
  Isn't Germany in recession because it's no longer able to compete on its manufacturing? Which would be different reason to the UK, which never had a competitive manufacturing industry in recent decades.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    I'm sure the lack of cheap energy (ie, due to the shutdown and then bombing of Nordstar pipelines) has something to do with it
pm90 3y ago
How much economic slowdown was the result of Brexit? With talks of Irish unification I wonder how long the UK can survive as a major economy. Will the scots abandon the sinking ship too?
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  > How much economic slowdown was the result of Brexit? There will never be a precise answer, and even if there was, someone would deny it for political reasons, but here is an estimate: "Britain’s decision to leave the European Union has hampered the economy to the tune of 5% versus other comparable countries, the estimates showed." https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/14/brexit-has-sliced-5percent-off-uk-economic-growth-goldman-sachs-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/14/brexit-has-sliced-5percent-o...
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    [dead]
- timthorn 3y ago
  Transfer payments to Scotland and NI are very significant - the Union brings value to the UK but, purely economically speaking, secession could be net positive.
- polski-g 3y ago
  Do the Scots have a sufficient army necessary to beat NATO? How would they survive the UK making an Article 5 declaration?
  - cassianoleal 3y ago
    Care to elaborate on what in a supposed Scottish independence would trigger NATO Article 5?
    - ChocolateGod 3y ago
      Obviously Nicola Sturgeon is a secret marxist who plans on invading the not so United Kingdom after independence.
intunderflow 3y ago
After over a decade of mismanagement and missed opportunities from successive governments of the conservative party this is hardly surprising. The UK doesn't look like it's going to rebound for many years, there are now significant structural issues, not least of them being poor infrastructure. I found this analysis of the UK particularly interesting: https://www.sambowman.co/p/democracy-is-the-solution-to-vetocracy https://www.sambowman.co/p/democracy-is-the-solution-to-veto...
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Can't blame them for the 2008 financial crisis, or even for Covid, though... and don't worry, the opposition is not better, judging by their plans (or lack thereof...). They'll most likely be in government by the end of this year, though. Fun times ahead. Edit: The bulk of the 2008 crisis was handled by the previous, Labour government and the conservatives inherited the debts to deal with. I'm not saying that handling of Covid was good, but looking at other countries it was certainly in the average (and the UK government decisively intervened to secure a domestic vaccine). The thing is that they've been in government for very long so have run out of talents and are obviously being blamed for everything. Many young people have never known anything else so of course they are the bad guys (on top of young people being on average more to the left). This is an eternal cycle and the same will eventually happen to the next Labour majority. Now, that's the issue Labour have: They have it easy at the moment, it's all the Tories' fault, the Tories are incompetent, etc. Fine, but at some point they will need an actual plan if only because, again, they'll most likely be in charge within months. Even Brexit is not exclusively the Conservatives' "fault": The Labour party and electorate were also highly divided on the issue and it was the Labour government of the time that decided against all restrictions to East European immigration in 2004. And I remember how popular they were when they obediently followed the US in Iraq... Labour even had a good shot as being elected earlier but made themselves unelectable by going far left, and they are still grappling with that.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    > Can't blame them for the 2008 financial crisis, or even for Covid There is plenty of blame on the current UK government for how they handled the COVID crisis. It even forced out a Prime Minister, albeit for reasons of clandestine office parties, not over casualty rates or PPE corruption scandals.
ak_111 3y ago
Seems like worst of both worlds if you are starting out: recession in terms of job opportunities (hard to find a job) yet house prices are still were they were at the beginning of Covid (11 times earning - a historical record by a long shot). So you can't find a job to pay the rent, while the rent is at a historical high relative to earning.
posix_monad 3y ago
If you don't work in finance in the UK, you should seriously consider moving to the US (for better income) or EU (for better quality of life).
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
  > EU (for better quality of life) Yeh, don't worry the people partially responsible for poor quality of life in the UK have already worked to make that option more unviable.
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    Uh huh, I think you may have it backwards. The people who were partially responsible for the better quality. Food was amazing, trading was amazing, funding was nice. All until the folk of England decided we wanted none of that.
    - NlightNFotis 3y ago
      You misread his comment - you're both agreeing here. He said that the people who brought us to this state have made it harder to move to the EU (because of Brexit limiting freedom of movement).
      - doublerabbit 3y ago
        Ah, my bad. I misread "in" as "of"
- matthewfelgate 3y ago
  I can't just move to the USA.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Thousands of people from the UK have been moving to Canada since Brexit, and average incomes here are higher than in the UK. UK and AUS residents can live and work in Canada on a 2-year visa, no questions asked. Immigration to the US is much more difficult. If you don't have a job offer, or a valid work permit of some kind, a non-immigrant tourist visa is the best you're going to get.
cal85 3y ago
Weird. It's a technical recession (GDP falling two quarters in a row). Yet unemployment has dropped to 3.8% [0] and real-terms wages are still going up [1]. I feel those figures are a better indicator for economic health than GDP growth, which seems to be a fairly loose measurement. But it is still weird that GDP growth tells such a different story. [0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotin... [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/latest https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  It's nice to finally see some wage increases, but most people are worse off than they were in 2010. https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/are-you-better-off-today/ https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/are-you-be... The figures hide the fact that most of the population can't afford to buy a property, and the cost of renting - which is not included in inflation figures - has hugely outstripped income.
  - cal85 3y ago
    The situation with homeownership and rent is undoubtedly much worse compared to generations past, as that article argues. But that's looking at changes over a decades timescale, during which the economy has gone through many periods of growing and shrinking. That's a socio-economic shift over generations - very interesting, but not really relevant to the question of whether we're in a recession/downturn right now, which is about whether things are currently getting better or worse, quarter to quarter.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    What measure are you using to say worse off if real terms wages are up as GP said? Or are you disputing that? (It did surprise me.)
- monkeydust 3y ago
  Yea you do start to wonder if we're measuring the wrong thing
mrlonglong 3y ago
I've been made redundant after 11 years two months ago and I'm raging at the Tories. Looking for work right now but very difficult because I'm 53 and have a hearing disability. I've been ghosted by recruitment agencies as soon as they find out that I'm deaf. Bastards.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  What's your job/line of work?
  - mrlonglong 3y ago
    Visual Basic developer, helped maintain and add new features to a large business application for 11 years, used Infragistics, C1 Components and crystal reports, SQL server etc for a small business in Hampshire. Looking for similar work maybe with C#.
    - mrlonglong 3y ago
      I have a hobby playing around with micro controllers, Linux and virtual machines. I use VMs on Linux to do my Windows development. Remote or Hampshire area is good.
somenameforme 3y ago
The UK is always just such an interesting place to analyze, in terms of data, because so much of it is open and easily accessible. Here [1] is data on average domestic energy prices in the UK over time. Every year from 2019-2021 it was around £1,300. 2022 it jumps to £2,294. 2023 it's up to £2,592. Median pre-tax weekly earnings are £682 [2], so that's an increase in costs of ~2-3 weeks of wages for the median. It's hard to see that not leading to major economic consequences because it's a double whammy: consumers now have less money, and companies are also paying more as well. I feel there's a rather giant pink elephant in this conversation. --- [1] - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6582b65223b70a000d234c97/quarterly-energy-prices-december-2023.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6582b65223b70... [2] - https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2023 https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
- pjc50 3y ago
  For me the clear indicator is https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/gdp... : that's adjusted for inflation and purchasing power parity, but NOT per capita. Despite population growth we took an absolutely massive hit in 2007 and have only slowly recovered. The energy discourse is a disaster. I remember when there was a protest group campaigning for subsidised insulation; they got clamped down on hard. Mustn't interfere with the gas profits.
  - cbeach 3y ago
    The protest group (Insulate Britain) were blocking major motorways like the M25, which is dangerous and disruptive to everyday people trying to get on with their lives and support their families. That’s why there had to be a clampdown. Protesters were arrested for criminal damage, causing danger to road users, willful obstruction of the highway and causing a public nuisance. An injunction was granted prohibiting demonstrators from "causing damage to the surface of or to any apparatus on or around the M25 including but not limited to painting, damaging by fire, or affixing any item or structure thereto". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulate_Britain_protests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulate_Britain_protests
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tim333 3y ago
As a Brit I'm not very surprised we are doing poorly. It was kind of a choice after Brexit. Either keep trade deals but leave some EU political influence or do a hard Brexit and screw up the trade deals and business. And then famously: >Boris Johnson promised to “fuck business”, and that’s exactly what he did https://www.newstatesman.com/business/2022/07/boris-johnson-fuck-business-exactly-what-he-did https://www.newstatesman.com/business/2022/07/boris-johnson-... And beyond the direct policies enacted, if you were setting up a business would you chose a country where that was the attitude?

82 points by okasaki 3y ago

UK feels like it's been in recession for years. London seems to be improving though so hopefully it lifts the rest of the country.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
There really isn't much past evidence for that. Many of UK's cities have been rotting away while London was booming.
- dangerwill 3y ago
  Yup, and London specifically is famous for this relationship with the rest of England + Wales. It's pretty interesting (and depressing) how London has become an Ur-example of internal brain drain
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    I mean, that's the entire reason behind the global rural-to-urban migration that's been going on for well... centuries at this point. It's just more pronounced in the UK (and I'd expect South Korea) because London is such a dominant city in the UK.
    - rantallion 3y ago
      It's a shame that the exodus from London prompted by the Covid lockdowns didn't last. Perhaps we might have seen at least some equalisation across the country. Alas, anything outside of the M25 might as well be another country as far as Westminster is concerned.
      - OJFord 3y ago
        Didn't last in what sense? Egress didn't continue(/ramp up) or significantly reversed?
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      In most places it happens to _more than one city_, though. London's a bit of an oddity (you see this in some smaller countries, but the UK's probably the biggest example).
  - impish9208 3y ago
    What is an “Ur-example”?
    - foldr 3y ago
      https://blogs.transparent.com/german/the-german-prefix-ur/ https://blogs.transparent.com/german/the-german-prefix-ur/
      - noelwelsh 3y ago
        Interesting. I assumed Ur came from the Sumerian city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur It was one of the first cities in the world, and 30-ish years ago I was taught it was the first.
      - OJFord 3y ago
        So it's not actually correctly used here? ('an Ur-anything' - e.g. 'an earliest example' as above - would never make sense for one thing?) I don't understand the intended meaning that's different from just 'example' here.
- pjc50 3y ago
  Cancellation of parts of HS2 (after most of the money has been spent) are of course intended to worsen that.
M2Ys4U 3y ago
Apparently there has been seven quarters of zero or negative growth in real GDP per capita, at least according to this tweet citing Bloomberg: https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1758062742865330410 https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1758062742865330410
- gruez 3y ago
  Not just a tweet, this seems to be confirmed by the ONS as well: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/timeseries/ihxw/pn2 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/times...
PaulKeeble 3y ago
That is the rising inequality. The economy doing better (or worse) really doesn't matter when 95% of people have been getting relatively poorer quickly for the past 15 years and somewhat for over 40 years. The economy doing well or not really doesn't impact anyone but the asset wealthy at this stage, the average person can't afford their bills.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Every development economist has said unequivocally that GDP growth alone is not a reliable measure of economic well-being. Usually this was thought to apply only to poor countries, where inequality was very high as the industrial sectors (where GDP growth mostly came from) were heavily concentrated in a few hands. It wasn't as much the case in rich countries where labour was better organized and had a stronger bargaining position when negotiating pay, so GDP growth did feed through to higher wages. That seems to have stopped in the rich world since the late 2000s. FTSE 100 company profits are up, yet they're pulling out every trick in the book to keep wages at poverty levels.
somenameforme 3y ago
Can you provide some details (re: changes in London) for somebody who knows relatively little of England?
- pjc50 3y ago
  "What do they know of England, who only England know?" -- Kipling (often quoted to make a point about the parochialism of a lot of English politics and its inability to compare against other, distant, foreign places such as Manchester)
- ilikerashers 3y ago
  London just seems to be getting busier again. Trains are busy in the morning, lots of people out and about, restaurants full, and recruiters are starting to ping again on LinkedIn. Given it's been at a low ebb since the pandemic, there is a bit more buzz about the city again. That said, there could be a huge collapse coming later this year but after so much negativity for so long, things may change. The new government should help that (even if they don't do anything!).
drcongo 3y ago
You think it might "trickle down"?
rsynnott 3y ago
I think if you considered London and the rest separately, the rest probably _has_ been in recession for years.

harryvederci 3y ago

Finally, I can start a startup! https://paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html https://paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html

roenxi 3y ago
Yeas and no. It is probably a good time to be working on a startup. But the UK has serious energy problems; I'm a squeaky wheel on the topic but their per capita energy figures are estimated to have dropped 30% from peak [0]. You can't startup your way out of a hole like that, someone serious needs to do some capital investment. The UK's energy policy is a sick joke. A startup involved in helping people to live energy efficiently would probably go great and be a real boon to the people; but it isn't addressing the root cause of the problem here. The squeeze is real. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab=chart&country=~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...
- OJFord 3y ago
  Article linked in GP doesn't argue you should start a startup to fix the bad economy though, it's just arguing it's a good time to start your startup whatever it is. Unless you leave the country, the 'serious energy problems', whatever caused the bad economy, and anything else in the country are still going to be present if you don't start a startup?

kypro 3y ago

I don't know how this is possible. State pensions and universal credit went up 10% last year and will be going up another ~8% this year. I understand inflation has high, but most people have a lot more money coming in to make up for that... Are people just deciding not to spend their extra income? Everyone I know seems to be doing fairly well right now honestly, especially now that energy prices are coming down. The job market isn't great, but that's really the only thing that I've seen that looks recessionary? And either way unemployment is still low.

trollied 3y ago
> I understand inflation has high, but most people have a lot more money coming in to make up for that... Do they? I certainly haven't had an inflation-matching pay rise.
- LandR 3y ago
  My salary in the last few years have jumped from 48k to 54k to 75k (and now have £6-£7k of extra income too, in interest etc) But I had to move jobs 3 times in 2 years to get those raises. And honestly, it still doesn't feel like enough. Tell me 5-10 years ago I'd earn £75k and I'd think that was going to be amazing, now a £75k salary kinda just feels like an average salary. And I have no kids! I don't know how people on average salaries with children are coping at all.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    Come on, 75k (nevermind 6k on top) with no children... That is extremely good, probaly the top 5% in the country. Median income is about 35k, which means half the people earn less and you earn more than double that with less expenses.
    - foldr 3y ago
      It's good relatively because a lot of people in the UK are very poor. In London (which is probably where you are if you're getting paid that much) £75k does not get you particularly far.

throwaway4good 3y ago

At the moment you have recession in Germany, Japan and the UK. While there is growth in the US, India and China. Wonder how long this will last …

PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
Isn't Germany in recession because it's no longer able to compete on its manufacturing? Which would be different reason to the UK, which never had a competitive manufacturing industry in recent decades.
- r00fus 3y ago
  I'm sure the lack of cheap energy (ie, due to the shutdown and then bombing of Nordstar pipelines) has something to do with it

pm90 3y ago

How much economic slowdown was the result of Brexit? With talks of Irish unification I wonder how long the UK can survive as a major economy. Will the scots abandon the sinking ship too?

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
> How much economic slowdown was the result of Brexit? There will never be a precise answer, and even if there was, someone would deny it for political reasons, but here is an estimate: "Britain’s decision to leave the European Union has hampered the economy to the tune of 5% versus other comparable countries, the estimates showed." https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/14/brexit-has-sliced-5percent-off-uk-economic-growth-goldman-sachs-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/14/brexit-has-sliced-5percent-o...
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  [dead]
timthorn 3y ago
Transfer payments to Scotland and NI are very significant - the Union brings value to the UK but, purely economically speaking, secession could be net positive.
polski-g 3y ago
Do the Scots have a sufficient army necessary to beat NATO? How would they survive the UK making an Article 5 declaration?
- cassianoleal 3y ago
  Care to elaborate on what in a supposed Scottish independence would trigger NATO Article 5?
  - ChocolateGod 3y ago
    Obviously Nicola Sturgeon is a secret marxist who plans on invading the not so United Kingdom after independence.

intunderflow 3y ago

After over a decade of mismanagement and missed opportunities from successive governments of the conservative party this is hardly surprising. The UK doesn't look like it's going to rebound for many years, there are now significant structural issues, not least of them being poor infrastructure. I found this analysis of the UK particularly interesting: https://www.sambowman.co/p/democracy-is-the-solution-to-vetocracy https://www.sambowman.co/p/democracy-is-the-solution-to-veto...

mytailorisrich 3y ago
Can't blame them for the 2008 financial crisis, or even for Covid, though... and don't worry, the opposition is not better, judging by their plans (or lack thereof...). They'll most likely be in government by the end of this year, though. Fun times ahead. Edit: The bulk of the 2008 crisis was handled by the previous, Labour government and the conservatives inherited the debts to deal with. I'm not saying that handling of Covid was good, but looking at other countries it was certainly in the average (and the UK government decisively intervened to secure a domestic vaccine). The thing is that they've been in government for very long so have run out of talents and are obviously being blamed for everything. Many young people have never known anything else so of course they are the bad guys (on top of young people being on average more to the left). This is an eternal cycle and the same will eventually happen to the next Labour majority. Now, that's the issue Labour have: They have it easy at the moment, it's all the Tories' fault, the Tories are incompetent, etc. Fine, but at some point they will need an actual plan if only because, again, they'll most likely be in charge within months. Even Brexit is not exclusively the Conservatives' "fault": The Labour party and electorate were also highly divided on the issue and it was the Labour government of the time that decided against all restrictions to East European immigration in 2004. And I remember how popular they were when they obediently followed the US in Iraq... Labour even had a good shot as being elected earlier but made themselves unelectable by going far left, and they are still grappling with that.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  > Can't blame them for the 2008 financial crisis, or even for Covid There is plenty of blame on the current UK government for how they handled the COVID crisis. It even forced out a Prime Minister, albeit for reasons of clandestine office parties, not over casualty rates or PPE corruption scandals.

ak_111 3y ago

Seems like worst of both worlds if you are starting out: recession in terms of job opportunities (hard to find a job) yet house prices are still were they were at the beginning of Covid (11 times earning - a historical record by a long shot). So you can't find a job to pay the rent, while the rent is at a historical high relative to earning.

posix_monad 3y ago

If you don't work in finance in the UK, you should seriously consider moving to the US (for better income) or EU (for better quality of life).

PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
> EU (for better quality of life) Yeh, don't worry the people partially responsible for poor quality of life in the UK have already worked to make that option more unviable.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  Uh huh, I think you may have it backwards. The people who were partially responsible for the better quality. Food was amazing, trading was amazing, funding was nice. All until the folk of England decided we wanted none of that.
  - NlightNFotis 3y ago
    You misread his comment - you're both agreeing here. He said that the people who brought us to this state have made it harder to move to the EU (because of Brexit limiting freedom of movement).
    - doublerabbit 3y ago
      Ah, my bad. I misread "in" as "of"
matthewfelgate 3y ago
I can't just move to the USA.
rchaud 3y ago
Thousands of people from the UK have been moving to Canada since Brexit, and average incomes here are higher than in the UK. UK and AUS residents can live and work in Canada on a 2-year visa, no questions asked. Immigration to the US is much more difficult. If you don't have a job offer, or a valid work permit of some kind, a non-immigrant tourist visa is the best you're going to get.

cal85 3y ago

Weird. It's a technical recession (GDP falling two quarters in a row). Yet unemployment has dropped to 3.8% [0] and real-terms wages are still going up [1]. I feel those figures are a better indicator for economic health than GDP growth, which seems to be a fairly loose measurement. But it is still weird that GDP growth tells such a different story. [0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotin... [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/latest https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
It's nice to finally see some wage increases, but most people are worse off than they were in 2010. https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/are-you-better-off-today/ https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/are-you-be... The figures hide the fact that most of the population can't afford to buy a property, and the cost of renting - which is not included in inflation figures - has hugely outstripped income.
- cal85 3y ago
  The situation with homeownership and rent is undoubtedly much worse compared to generations past, as that article argues. But that's looking at changes over a decades timescale, during which the economy has gone through many periods of growing and shrinking. That's a socio-economic shift over generations - very interesting, but not really relevant to the question of whether we're in a recession/downturn right now, which is about whether things are currently getting better or worse, quarter to quarter.
- OJFord 3y ago
  What measure are you using to say worse off if real terms wages are up as GP said? Or are you disputing that? (It did surprise me.)
monkeydust 3y ago
Yea you do start to wonder if we're measuring the wrong thing

mrlonglong 3y ago

I've been made redundant after 11 years two months ago and I'm raging at the Tories. Looking for work right now but very difficult because I'm 53 and have a hearing disability. I've been ghosted by recruitment agencies as soon as they find out that I'm deaf. Bastards.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
What's your job/line of work?
- mrlonglong 3y ago
  Visual Basic developer, helped maintain and add new features to a large business application for 11 years, used Infragistics, C1 Components and crystal reports, SQL server etc for a small business in Hampshire. Looking for similar work maybe with C#.
  - mrlonglong 3y ago
    I have a hobby playing around with micro controllers, Linux and virtual machines. I use VMs on Linux to do my Windows development. Remote or Hampshire area is good.

somenameforme 3y ago

The UK is always just such an interesting place to analyze, in terms of data, because so much of it is open and easily accessible. Here [1] is data on average domestic energy prices in the UK over time. Every year from 2019-2021 it was around £1,300. 2022 it jumps to £2,294. 2023 it's up to £2,592. Median pre-tax weekly earnings are £682 [2], so that's an increase in costs of ~2-3 weeks of wages for the median. It's hard to see that not leading to major economic consequences because it's a double whammy: consumers now have less money, and companies are also paying more as well. I feel there's a rather giant pink elephant in this conversation. --- [1] - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6582b65223b70a000d234c97/quarterly-energy-prices-december-2023.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6582b65223b70... [2] - https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2023 https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

pjc50 3y ago
For me the clear indicator is https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/gdp... : that's adjusted for inflation and purchasing power parity, but NOT per capita. Despite population growth we took an absolutely massive hit in 2007 and have only slowly recovered. The energy discourse is a disaster. I remember when there was a protest group campaigning for subsidised insulation; they got clamped down on hard. Mustn't interfere with the gas profits.
- cbeach 3y ago
  The protest group (Insulate Britain) were blocking major motorways like the M25, which is dangerous and disruptive to everyday people trying to get on with their lives and support their families. That’s why there had to be a clampdown. Protesters were arrested for criminal damage, causing danger to road users, willful obstruction of the highway and causing a public nuisance. An injunction was granted prohibiting demonstrators from "causing damage to the surface of or to any apparatus on or around the M25 including but not limited to painting, damaging by fire, or affixing any item or structure thereto". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulate_Britain_protests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulate_Britain_protests

deleted 3y ago

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tim333 3y ago

As a Brit I'm not very surprised we are doing poorly. It was kind of a choice after Brexit. Either keep trade deals but leave some EU political influence or do a hard Brexit and screw up the trade deals and business. And then famously: >Boris Johnson promised to “fuck business”, and that’s exactly what he did https://www.newstatesman.com/business/2022/07/boris-johnson-fuck-business-exactly-what-he-did https://www.newstatesman.com/business/2022/07/boris-johnson-... And beyond the direct policies enacted, if you were setting up a business would you chose a country where that was the attitude?