Is Wales still with us?
UK GDP fell by 2.4% in Q1 09 over Q4 08 [1][2], which following on from a 1.8% decline in Q4 08, 0.7% in Q3 08 and 0.1% in Q2 08, means a 4.9% year-on-year decline.
To put this in some context, it is as if the entire Welsh economy had ceased to be plus a bit of Cornwall.
[1] Seasonally adjusted, otherwise it's nearly a 4% quarterly drop.
[2] Biggest since 1958 all the papers are saying, which suggests the ONS briefed them on it, but all the data I have says Q1 1974 was slightly larger.
Dumbing down
There's something a little strange
reading about 'dumbing down' in the
Daily Telegraph.
I can't quite put my finger on it...
Labels: Telegraph
Volatility in British poltics
Peter C challanged me a few weeks back on my statement that the concept of 'record swing' was less important as political trends had got more volatile. He noted that parties seemed to retain power for longer now than they used to. I'm still not backing down, but my initial attempt to prove this hasn't worked. Using this excellent
resource of Guardian ICM polls back to 1984, and filling in a few monthly gaps by interpolation (only about four polls in the mid 1980s and strangely February this year) the following chart shows the
average monthly change in the Conservative share of the vote over the past year. I've used absolute values, so if the Conservatives over the past year went up 1%, down 1%, up 1%, down 1% and so on, that would average at 1%, not 0%.
Anyway in the year to Feb 2009 the Conservative vote share has been more volatile on this measure than at any time since May 1989, but on the other hand in Feb 2006 and then before in Feb 02 it was less volatile than any other period, and if there is a trend it probably is towards less volatility (dividing the % change by their vote share doesn't make much of a difference, by the way). I suppose this is partly because a lot of this period they have been down to their core support, but that of course is not helpful to my theory either.
[Larger image
here]
I might share the same dishwasher as Tony Blair
Siemens, £515, it
sounds very similar.
Rather dodgy this claim of his, although the Telegraph's trying to confuse leaving No.10 with leaving Parliament, surely?
You have to pay money to save money
George Osborne
claimed £40 for DVDs of two of his own speeches on 'value for money' for taxpayers. Which is quite lovely. [via the Stoa]
The Real Cost of Living Index is BACK!!!
And apparently prices are
down 10% year-on-year. Full credit to the
Telegraph for still publishing this, I'd assumed it would be allowed to die a death.
The BNP and other parties
Google trends tells us that the areas where "British National Party" is searched most relative to other searches are Luton, Bradford, and Maidenhead, Nottinham, Leeds and Hull. Then
Bletchley, which crops up a lot in these google trends things.
UKIP, however, are from Maidenhead, Liverpool, Brighton, Nottingham and then Cambridge (with good old Bletchley coming up). The
English Democrats are from Bristol, Croyden, and so on.
Nick Griffin
The Times'
profile is interesting - among other things it claims he has two dogs called Anne and Frank.
Football transfer fees
The BBC gives us a handy (not sure about the accuracy)
chart of world record transfer fees in sterling (note it's slightly different in euros) back to 1905.
Ronaldo's, if it happens, is by far the largest, even if you adjust for inflation. Zidane's in 2009 prices is about £57m, Shearer's £21m. Rossi, at £1.75m in 1976, is equivalent to £9.4m today, Cruyff's £922k, £8.3m today. On these figures the first £1m player was
Jeppson (£52k) in 1952, but
Ferreyra in 1932 (£23k) was only just short at £950k.
Current records are far in advance of anything seen before, even in real terms and even as a % of national GDP. Spain's purchase of Ronaldo for about 70m euros makes it 0.007% of Spanish GDP. Looking at Italian transfers in the 1950s, the record was about 0.001% of GDP, rising in the 1970s to about 0.0023% and by the early 1990s to about 0.0032% of GDP.
Labels: Football
British business sells £80m of goods to Spain
Ah,
that explains why Sterling has been so
strong today.
Labels: currency speculation, Economcs
