Tuesday 25 January 2011

How are we doing?

BBC reports that economic growth declined by 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010. Clearly the returning shadow Treasury spokesman, Ed Balls, will blame the coalition government for this. With his record of denying that the deficits of the last ten years contributed to the UK's debt level, he will no doubt ignore the evidence that there was a severe snowfall in December. There is, on  the other hand, some hope in that growth figures in the past have been revised upwards.

There is better news for the coalition on the graduate jobs front. The worst fears about a continuing contraction in graduate vacancies have been shown to be groundless.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would have thought that the news that 4 out of 10 pupils in Wales are below their reading age would have been more interesting.

Frank Little said...

Yes indeed, but Kirsty Williams and Peter Black among many others have commented on that gross failure and I couldn't think of anything to the debate at the time.

Since then, I have seen the estimate that only 75% of the Welsh education budget actually goes to schools (it's higher in England) and heard the complaint from a successful Midlands manufacturer, most of whose output goes to export, that he is being held back from expansion by a shortage of capable school-leavers. If that is true of Birmingham, it must be even more true of Welsh SMEs.

Frank Little said...

I can also add http://welshlibdems.org.uk/