Tomorrow's Business Today
To hell in a hand cart
Last week TB asked for the good news about the economy.
This was on the basis that the bad stuff is fairly obvious and that the business pages can’t simply be a run of stories that say “everything is rubbish”.
For a start, everything isn’t rubbish. Not for everyone all of the time.
Today we learnt, contrary to those insisting a recession is inevitable, that the economy in fact grew in May, by 0.5%.
That is one of those small numbers that’s actually quite big. If we grew like that every month we’d be rich, fairly quickly.
The figure came after declines in March and April that had the experts predicting that May would be flat at best.
Darren Morgan at the ONS said: “The economy rebounded in May with growth across all main sectors.”
So it wasn’t just one area of accidental bounce – everything did better.
If you believe some economic and political commentary, Britain is a hopeless nation that can’t build a bridge from here to there.
That is part of our self-deprecation, one of our nicer national traits.
It is also a bit wearisome. FT Associate Editor and Columnist, Janan Ganesh observed in the FT the other day that our tendency to make a joke out of everything must hurt our world standing.
“It is not that foreigners don’t get the joke,” he writes. “They don’t get the point of the joke.”
There remains plenty of room for some earnest boosterish, though perhaps not from Boris.
Put Richard Littlejohn down. We aren’t really all going to Hell In A Handcart.
We’ll be alright. Tell us how.
Press release of the day
It would take a typical SME 314 years to make what Amazon will make on Prime Day, says this from Real Business Rescue.
Amazon will make sales of £1.4 billion on Prime Day in the UK alone.
Shaun Barton, National Online Business Operations Director at Real Business Rescue said: “The convenience of Amazon can cause a moral quandary for shoppers who’ve had years of buying from them online knowing they can receive their items in less than 24 hours.
