Champagne has been replaced by white rum in a “shopping basket” used to determine inflation – so how much does this basket tell us about how austerity is hitting UK consumers?
Even with some fiscal hocus pocus that gives the Treasury an extra £3.8bn, government borrowing in the year to date is still worse than this time last year. And that should worry the chancellor.
The governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, says the economy is recovering but inflation will be higher than previously forecast.
New research by Shelter suggests basic foodstuffs would be beyond the means of most families if the price of the weekly shop had risen in line with house prices over the last 40 years.
With the words “flexible inflation target” peppering his Treasury select committee hearing, new Bank of England Governor Mark Carney clearly wants to do more to help Britain’s contracting economy.
Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, says it is time to review inflation targeting and describes the UK economy as a patient that needs reviving. Faisal Islam reports from Davos.
Iain Duncan Smith says we’re spending too much on the benefits bill, which have gone up faster than private sector wages. Is he right? FactCheck takes a look.
A rise in university tuition fees and soaring food costs are blamed for the shock rise in UK inflation to a five-month high of 2.7 per cent.
The cost of living fell to a three-year low in September – but recent energy price hikes by four of the big six energy companies, combined with food price rises, will push it back up again.
The UK’s economy is not expected to grow at all in 2012 and it will take an “Olympic” effort and hard work to battle the eurozone crisis, domestic deficit-cutting and tight credit conditions.
Worries that Greece may soon be bankrupt and Spain will need a full-scale bailout send the euro sliding and Spanish bond yields soaring to a euro-record high of 7.52 per cent.
“We’ve got a big job to do in getting this economy back on its feet,” — Osborne.
The UK economic forecast is cut and the global recovery shows further signs of weakness, the International Monetary Fund said in its World Economic Outlook today.
Greeks, fed up with five years of a bitter recession and almost 23 per cent unemployment, weigh the consequences of voting with their hearts or minds on the eve of a crucial election.
As Greece implodes under tough fiscal reform Ireland, the IMF’s ‘austerity poster boy’, votes on belt-tightening measures in a referendum too close to call.