The latest "negative growth"

So, the economy didn’t grow over Christmas. Crazy, eh? Anyone would think that people have less money to spend or something.

Guido makes the point that tax rises at this point may not be a fantastic idea, and I’m inclined to agree with him. In fact, I’d go the whole hog and advocate tax cuts as a way to invigorate the economy. Austerity is all well and good, but the nation will justly feel pretty pessimistic if it ends up paying the same level of (or more) tax for fewer services. Give the people a break; give them some of their money back.

Of course, there is some validity in the claim that the poor weather contributed to the poor results for the last quarter. Certainly, the fact that several days (and longer for some areas) in the key weeks leading up top Christmas were lost through the snow impacted on spending levels. After all, if you can’t reach the shops, you can’t spend – and not everyone has quite got around to the idea of Christmas shopping via the interwebs yet.

But really, this shouldn’t be an excuse that the government can use with any degree of conviction. There was terrible weather in December 2009; it impacted on the economy. So why, oh why, would the government not do any sort of contingency planning for precisely this sort of poor weather? Likewise, why did bus companies not invest in some snow tires? Why weren’t the rail companies putting in place emergency snowfall plans? The poor high-street retailers were largely fucked by the fact that the infrastructure was not able to cope with the utterly predictable event of snow in winter.

So the dip in the figures for the last quarter may not be entirely down to the government’s economic policy; but leading the way by doing all it can to keep our infrastructure going in the pretty much guaranteed event of poor weather in December is an area of policy in which they can, and must, do far better.