My mate David requested I do something on Public Sector Borrowing. As it happens my daughter Lily is doing A level History at Durham Johnston Comprehensive. David and I did the same A level at the same school, but 30 years earlier. I thought it might fun to do a short history of public debt since … Read more
When I say the rest of us, I mean older people. I am 49, which is well beyond the cut off for being young. I had 2 experiences this week which were in such stark contrast that I found it hard to reconcile them. The first was the announcement by Theresa May that we would … Read more
Anyone who reads the research papers and speeches from the Bank of England will have come across loads of scary reports about the terrible state of productivity in the UK. All of the data shows that the UK lags behind most of our competitors in output per capita – British workers are less productive than … Read more
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Labour Force Survey and the Claimant Count, and why they might not a very reliable source of information on what is happening in the UK economy. The Labour Force Survey and the Claimant Count aren’t the only ways the Government gathers information about employment. HMRC and … Read more
Wath on Dearne used to be home to Cortonwood Colliery. In the 1970s it was a mining town, part of the mighty Yorkshire Coalfield. A similar place to where I grew up in the villages to the East of Durham City. In fact I am picking on Wath as a subject because it … Read more
This is the UK Labour Force Survey. When you read that Unemployment has gone up or down the original data largely comes from this survey document. Most people have never seen it or participated in it, because you have to be drawn at random to be part of the sample. To keep the sample … Read more
I stood in a glass cube. The kind of glass walled office designed to make Senior Managers look hard working and transparent. The kind that discourage people from entering. With me was the Finance Director of a large statutory public body. He surveyed the massed ranks of accountants and finance staff which occupied the … Read more
Finally got round to catching up with the Harvard Business Review article about Robots taking peoples jobs, in which they forecast the rise of Robot Doctors. There have been a lot of excitable headlines about Robots wiping out white collar jobs, and the HBR paper generated plenty of noise in the press. I understand why … Read more