Evening,
I genuinely just want clarification on the above statements.
The first statement suggests ONS is guilty of under forecasting growth.
The second statement suggests ??? Have over forecast growth.
Also 3.75% to 3.5% - are you referring to Interest Rates?
Cheers
I agree that AI will reduce costs, if used correctly. Just relating to one area I am familiar with.
Most of my projects are for Supermarket chains and it is massively focusing on AI. From reporting on low stock/empty shelves to security.
In Morrisons the gates donāt open unless you have paid. If you try to fool its scale system by selecting a different produce it will recognise this and request a staff member.
It is increasingly being used to identify likely shop lifters and notice irregular shoppers practices.
By reducing āShrinkageā you inevitably reduce prices.
ONS has had a number of widely reported issues gathering information from which itās statistics on the current state of the economy are derived - These are then used by government, private sector and organisations like the Bank of England or the OBR to feed into their forecasts for future expectations. Both the OBR and BoE have commented this year on the challenges they are having with the quality of data provided by ONS.
Itās not unusual for their to be some revisions, but the frequency and scale here appear to be significant.
ONS has seen response rates to its surveys drop from around 50% to as low as 13-17%, with it having to delay publication of some of their reports and give warnings on the quality of data within their surveys. A low response rate means that the actions of one large business could give a misleading indication of what is happening at ground level.
There was a formal review into the ONS earlier this year.
ONS delays release of retail sales data over quality concerns - BBC News
UK statistics agency admits more figures are flawed
UK inflation number for April too high after data blunder - BBC News
UKās data agency has ādeep seatedā issues, review finds - BBC News
For several years the OBR have been criticised by commentators that their modelling was too generous towards future growth expectations. This year they have attempted to tighten up their expectations which has led them to cutting their growth expectations for the next 5 years. Most likely coincidental it happened under a Labour government, but probably left a bad taste in the chancellorās mouth all the same.
However, given the above concerns with ONS data and the questionable assumptions I referred to in the previous post, the reduction in growth expectations may be flawed.
No, the level of growth the UK economy the OBR expects the economy to grow by across the next 5 years. (so they forecast the economy will be 3.5% bigger in 5 years than it is now rather than 3.75% bigger. That perceived reduction in growth means the government will have less revenue than previously forecast and has to either identify additional sources of revenue or cuts to spending to compensate if it wishes to meet itās targets).
In the first quarter of this year I think it was forecasting for just this year alone growth of around 0.5%, yet by the recent budget this had risen to about 1.5%.
Cheers 
Reviving an old discussion point with some happy news to end the year!!
Hopefully in 2026 they can hit the $3tn mark!!
thanks,
Iāll try my best! 
Oh, I do hope so!
It would be so nice for them.
Hopefully we can all cheer them on towards even greater levels of record-breaking wealth.
They obviously need it.
Can we organise a whip round?
all good, theyve saved you the trouble, its allready been organised on our behalf 
Deleted after being informed the video was AI faked
Thatās AI. Also the use of āorderā in the house of commons is normally the leader of the house telling other people to be quiet - not directed at the person speaking.
Thanks for correcting - will delete it
Zahawi, eh?
What a fucking cunt that bloke is.
Another fucking chancer. Couldnāt hold down any cabinet post for long. Wasnāt he actually sacked as Chancellor of the Exchequer for failing to openly declare HMRC investigations into his tax affairs?
Now he wants to join this other band of dodgy scumbags. Heās the sort of guy who would gladly have worn a fucking uniform in 1930s Germany.
This feels like one of those decisions that looks small on a balance sheet but is strategically awful, and I am surprised the government has not stepped in to stop it.
For decades the BBC has been one of the UKās most effective soft-power assets. Putting BBC News behind a paywall in America doesnāt just reduce reach; it breaks habit, relevance and trust at exactly the moment when credible international news matters most. Non-partisan international news is already scarce in the US, further reducing it now for what a couple of million, is dumb.
Itās not a financial decision.
Ok, I found this interesting. 63% of Londoners think the city is safe. They should know, they live there.
The proportion who think itās safe is lower in every other region. So why do they think that? Is it due to scare mongering maybe?
Almost certainly. Itās a bit like the image of Liverpool as a hotbed of crime despite the fact that it is quite middling to low compared with other major urban conurbations.
The ONS Crime survey is here if you want some properly researched figures:
The number of times I see āLondonistanā on social media in a weekā¦
Tell me in a single word youāre a fucking idiot who should be neuteredā¦
Fuck 'em. This city and country is better off without them.
I didnāt know this! I look at the Beeb news online from time to time, but I look at the football section each week.
BBC radio started messing me about so I donāt listen to that any more. Before I could just listen to whatever programs I wanted but things changed a few months ago. And now the news!
The Beeb probably needs to get some more income streams going to pay for lawyers to fight Trump!
