Our economy is doing better, clap your hands if you believe!

So at what point should we sit back, evaluate things, and wonder if in fact the G Ozzy actually knew what the hell what he was doing with the economy?

From what is being reported, it would seem that good news has happened all round, and the economy is getting better. We've had unemployment drop, a raised growth forecast, allegedly we're seen better real wages and we've finally appeared to hit our targeted inflation rate.

I've had a perverse sense of mixed feeling over all of this because I don't like G Ozzy and his frantic deep cuts so hearing that we're actually recovering and there's hope around the corner briefly upset me for ruining my personal narrative of him being a fool. I belatedly realised that, ya know, a good economy is a good thing and that's something to be happy about regardless of the personal fool state of any person. So yay.

Of course as we all know that once a number is introduced into politics it instantly reverts from being a mathematical immobile fact to a dirty twisted floozy of a lie. So I'd like to have a deeper look at some things. Also I may be able to reconcile my personal narrative to G Ozzy be a finally lucky fool, but a fool regardless.

For starters that whole real wages thing. We're apparently better off! Eh, but not really. If you take into account wages versus inflations that's about 2.4% versus 2.1%, so yeah, that's not right. Inflation seems ahead there, but if you taking into account tax cuts... it all starts getting very complicated. Going off figures reported from the BBC, it would appear the average weekly wages have risen from £472 to a whopping £475. Wow. In the strictest technical sense, yes, well done. We have more money. Of course, that's not considering how for about the last five years inflation has outstripped wages considerably... or how train fares and energy prices have exploded... house prices are unaffordable to most... but hey! Go buy yourself a coke. If there's a deal on, you'll be able to pick up some Pringles with that £3. So in the purest strictest sense that is correct, but in a non-pragmatic way.

For our slowly rising house prices, we have the Help to Buy scheme, or to go by it's alternate name from the IMF and the Institute of Directors the Oh Shit God No Not This Again scheme. It's a government backed scheme to pump a interest free loan to people to afford even more expensive houses with a tiny deposit that does a great job of raising house prices; so clearly the Express is fucking ecstatic over this. Never mind that British houses are already overvalued and under supplied, pfft, raise those house prices up, it looks good. What, this is exactly the same shit that caused this mess? Pfft, free money suckers! So what if in the long term this stuff is exactly the sort of thing that caused the recession in the first place? That's for future-me to consider. Present-me is about to hold a house warming orgy in my brand new condo! It's always amazing how much we human's like to fall back into bad habits.

I'll briefly pass over the unemployment figures, because I came to the opinion long ago that there's so many ways to stack those figures they've quickly become pointless. However, supposing they are true there still is worry that a lot of these newly generated jobs are part-time, or on zero hour contracts. Or jobs that have nothing to do with the government's interference.

My sinking feeling over a lot of this good news is that it distracts from the fact that this recovery has not only been a long time coming, it has been the longest time coming ever. For realsies. We've had a longer recovery than the Great Depression! Go us. It's definitely embarrassing. That strikes me as however this recovery is dressed, that different tactics: less mean-spirited and ideologically driven - would of pushed us out into growth far earlier. I'm also rather worried that good news is being used to once again bang the 'This recession is all Labour's fault' tune which is not very fair. True, Labour pissed away money on frivolities. It's kinda their thing. And they were in power when the recession hit, also true. But it started over a global recession - that's not one party's fault. Even if they oversaw a pension catastrophe, Millennium dome nonsense and flogging off our gold on the cheap.

" Yes, I know it took Disneyland five years to show a profit, but I've got a good feeling this could do it in one!"

In fairness, of all the recessions I read about in history this one at least has seemed to me the better one to live through - unemployment has not been utterly god awful, people aren't starving in the streets (though an increase in food bank withdrawals suggest that it's not all happiness and sunshine) so our societal welfare safety net looks to be keeping the worst of it away. It's just a pity it's currently being gutted.

I'll take the news things are improving, even with the truckload of caveats to the improvements. The economy works in mysterious ways, including consumer confidence, so shrieking that things are brilliant until everyone starts to believe can actually help. But I'll continue to be wary of having the lucky fool G Ozzy attempt to shoulder the credit and shift the blame.