Author Archives: Simon Briscoe

Services bounce back

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Simon Briscoe

Just as everyone was dusting off the double-dip narrative, back comes services output to show that the economy is still growing! Services output in January (released today by the ONS) was the second highest (after last September’s) since the recession … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, UK | 1 Comment

Spending on fuel – rising petrol prices

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Simon Briscoe

Looking at the automotive fuel component of retail sales figures published yesterday, it’s easy to see why fuel costs were such a feature of this week’s Budget. While the volume of fuel sold has not changed dramatically, the value of … Continue reading →

Posted in Energy, Inflation, UK | 2 Comments

New RPI weights ………

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Simon Briscoe

The weights used in the inflation figures are changing – they always do around this time of year. The CPI weights were updated last month in the January data and the RPI will be updated in the February figures published … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Inflation, Pensions, UK | Leave a comment

Splits in the labour market – the UK’s latest numbers

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Simon Briscoe

Today’s labour market data was further confirmation that the position has stabilised in aggregate – both employment and unemployment have been steady over the last six months. Labour Market: Headline indicators, UK from Timetric But digging beneath the headlines shows … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Employment, Labour, UK, Unemployment | 2 Comments

A* A levels – Where are they?

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Simon Briscoe

We’ve had great fun working with the Sunday Times and the Good Schools Guide over the last few weeks to produce a wonderful set of data. We will be coming back to this data set (A level results for 2010, … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Local, schools, UK | 4 Comments