family store company

The economy: Squeezed

THERE was never any doubt that Britain?s economy was destined for a stormy close to 2011. Its proximity to the tempest engulfing Europe guaranteed that. All told, the economy?s fourth-quarter performance?a contraction of 0.2%?is a bit worse than expected, but hardly surprising. Is worse to come?The answer depends overwhelmingly on whether Europe?s crisis deepens or is resolved. A sharp decline in European industrial production from September hit both demand and confidence among British businesses. In the fourth quarter British industrial output sank by 1.2%. Yet the euro-zone economy seemed to be stabilising by the end of the year. Industry on both sides of the English Channel fared somewhat better in December, and in January the euro zone posted a surprise increase in manufacturing activity.Things are somewhat cheerier at home, too. Consumer-price inflation fell from 4.8% to 4.2% from November to December alone. That should reduce pressure on real household incomes, buoying demand. The hangover from December?s gyrations could leave Britain in recession through the first quarter, but growth is expected to return thereafter. The IMF now forecasts growth of 0.6% in 2012, a bit better than the average economists? projection of 0.2%. Those figures hinge on continued progress towards a resolution of Europe?s crisis.
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Professional and business services: Unsung heroes

THE court battle between Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, which centres on years-ago dealings in a Russian oil company, has kept London?s high court busy for the past three months. It has provided amusement to Russian journalists, who are keen to peek inside the lives of two rich men. And it has plumped British lawyers? pockets by an unknown, but surely considerable, sum. Law seems to be defying wider economic trends: according to the latest official figures, turnover has grown by about 10% in the past five years. Two of the world?s top five firms are based in London, and last year alone the number of solicitors swelled by 3.5%. Law is a thriving export industry, with foreign earnings accounting for about 25% of the total.Talk of rebalancing the economy away from harmful, ethereal financial services and back to honest manufacturing tends to overlook a large, thriving business sector that falls roughly between the two. Taken together, professional services (lawyers, accountants, architects and so on) and business services (anything from IT and call centres to security, training and catering) are worth 17% of...
The mortgage market: Home truths

SOMETIMES it takes the interaction of powerful forces for things just to stand still. So it is with Britain?s housing market, which lenders expect to remain characterised this year by low levels of transactions and stable prices. But, quietly, the property market is being transformed.The forces bearing down on housing are obvious enough. Home sales have fallen sharply since the start of the financial crisis, to around half their 2007 levels. That reflects greater conservatism on the part of lenders??We don?t assume that home prices will go up, a mistake everyone made in the past,? says one?and of borrowers worried by an uncertain economic outlook at home and endless euro-crisis headlines. Household demand for secured credit fell in the last quarter of 2011, according to the Bank of England.A slump in volumes has not led to a slide in prices, however. House prices are down by less than 10% from their peak, still well above The Economist?s definition of ?fair value?, which is the long-run average ratio of house prices to rents. Prices in America, by contrast, have fallen back to fair value. A shortage of housing supply has helped sustain prices, as have low interest rates: two-thirds of British mortgage-holders are on variable-rate loans. A big rise in unemployment would unsettle this equilibrium, but only if joblessness bites among homeowners rather...
Unlikely cities: In name only

The Michael Bloomberg of Tower Hamlets
LONDONERS like to think they live in one of the world?s great cities. London may be great, but, formally, it is no city. Lacking a royal charter, it is merely an administrative division composed of 33 local authorities and controlled by the Greater London Authority. But if London cannot be a city, perhaps bits of it can. One new city will be created in Britain this year to mark the queen?s diamond jubilee. Among the 25 places that have submitted bids are two London boroughs, Croydon and Tower Hamlets.Until 1889 city status was given only to towns with an Anglican cathedral. That changed when Birmingham was awarded a royal charter despite lacking a diocese. The government has periodically handed out the honour since, often in conjunction with a royal celebration. But there are no fixed criteria and no clear rewards. City status affords no new rights, privileges or duties; the biggest change is in the signage and stationery.Most towns make economic arguments, seeing city status as a draw for investors. There is no evidence for this, says...
Bagehot: Global Britain, SOS

WITH your back to the open sea, an island can feel encircled, even claustrophobic. Turn to face the waves and an island feels like a starting point, a place surrounded by a variety of bracing possibilities, both good and bad.Britain has the politics of an island. At worst, its political debate can be parochial, even tin-eared about the world outside. Yet Britain is an outrider for openness, standing out among large European nations for its faith in free trade, liberalised markets and undistorted competition. In many neighbouring countries, calls to reject free trade and embrace protectionism attract a quarter or more of the vote. Not in Britain. Yet in island politics, the temptation to gaze inward is never far away.Debates about capitalism dominate British politics. The Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, his Liberal Democrat deputy Nick Clegg, and the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Ed Miliband, have repeatedly spoken about building a fairer economy. Responding to voter anger, they talk of reining in bankers? bonuses and pay packages for company bosses. All three agree that there is a need to...
Scottish independence: More than just words

But who will call the tune?
?DO YOU agree that Scotland should be an independent country?? If Alex Salmond gets his way, that will be the main question confronting his compatriots in the autumn of 2014. Scotland?s Nationalist first minister set the timing of the referendum on the nation?s independence earlier this month. But its wording, which was announced in a consultation document on January 25th, will be more important to the eventual result.Unionists want Scots to be asked simply whether they wish to stay in the United Kingdom or to leave it. Mr Salmond?s main question does that, albeit in a rather leading way. But his consultation keeps open the option of an additional question: whether Scotland should be given more powers of self-government. Mr Salmond?s critics say that he wants to include this option of ?devolution max? on the ballot because he cannot persuade enough Scots to leave the union: polls suggest only one-third support a break. He retorts that it would be undemocratic to exclude an option that commands a lot of support.Mr Salmond?s announcement is merely the latest...
Demography: The changing face of London

LONDON imports the young and exports the old, the theory goes?or went. For decades people have come to the capital to go to university or work, moving out again when their children require more space or education or when they retire. But a startling demographic change has drastically slowed the conveyor belt.Births in the capital each year have soared by 25% since 2002, as British women who delayed childbearing finally got down to it and London?s many immigrants produced in Stakhanovite quantities. London contributed fully 37% of England?s natural population increase (the surplus of births over deaths) between 2009 and 2010. Many parents are now staying put, thanks to a sticky mortgage market that makes it hard for buyers to get a loan and a sticky labour market that makes it hard for anyone to be sure of a job. Half as many London properties were sold in 2010 as in 2004. Grandparents, too, are less keen on leaving than they were. Black and Asian immigrants who settled in London in the 1960s and 1970s are disinclined to move away from their families in London for the pleasures of, say, Margate.So London is...
Health reform: This will hurt a bit

WHAT education was to Tony Blair in his first term, health is to David Cameron. The National Health Service is not just a target for reform and a recipient of comparatively generous tax funding. It is the public service to which the prime minister has made the strongest personal commitment, and the one on which he wants to be judged. But, as the coalition?s health bill heads for the statute books, problems are multiplying.Reform plans launched a year ago seek to do two things at once, both onerous. The first is to save �20 billion ($31 billion) by the fiscal year 2014-15, requiring productivity to rise by 4% annually. The second is to place more responsibility for commissioning patients? care in the hands of local doctors, who are expected to group together to buy services from hospitals or other providers?a process ministers believe will bear down on costs. At the same time, private health providers will be allowed greater leeway to operate in NHS hospitals.It has been a hard road. Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has been forced to delay the introduction of consortia and make them more accountable to local scrutiny. Instead of encouraging new ways of delivering care, austerity has prompted rationing: the number of patients waiting longer than the 18-week target for hospital appointments has jumped by over 40%. This week a parliamentary committee criticised the...
Bagehot: Alex Salmond, Little Englander

ALEX SALMOND, leader of Scotland?s pro-independence party and first minister of the Scottish government, has a revelation to share. Over the years, he confides, there has been a tendency among some people in Scotland to blame things that go wrong on the English. He adopts a sorrowful air, as if pondering?for the very first time?man?s capacity for grievance.Happily, Mr Salmond has a plan. He intends to hold a referendum on Scottish independence in the autumn of 2014. Grant his homeland its independence from the United Kingdom, he says, and the honest folk of Scotland will be friends with the ?plain people of England?. Flanked by a pair of large Scottish Saltire flags, he quotes the homespun wisdom of a childhood family friend, predicting that, after independence, England will lose a ?surly lodger? and gain a ?good neighbour?.Mr Salmond calls himself the most Anglophile figure in Scottish politics. He has ?great faith? that the English people can craft a modern new identity without the ?appendage? of Britain. In a public lecture in London on January 24th, he plans to argue that the example of an independent...

The Economist: Britain Thu, 26 January 2012 16:02:59 GMT

Case Sealer - Case Sealer
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