Iain Dale’s Misleading Fact of the Day

He says in his title: ‘Unemployment is always higher under Labour’ Well, no.  Let’s look at the Claimant Count as a simple measure: My rough averages say: Conservatives since the War have averaged a claimant count of 1.56 million.  The Labour party: 900 thousand.  Clearly you have to interpret Iain’s post differently from the obvious

The TUC swipes away a miserabilist myth

And you know the myth I mean.   You know, there is loads of ‘hidden unemployment‘ that reflects some sort of Labour fiddle, taking the gloss out of the frankly wonderful unemployment figures (certainly compared to the gleeful alarmism of the Conservative press last summer). Here is the TUC’s graph-strewn reply. Eight million economically inactive people

Some observations from signed up members of the sensible party

First, from Chris Dillow: our gilt rates  do not makes us a more risky proposition than Italy: Granted, UK five-year yields are slightly higher than Italy’s: 2.81% vs. 2.72% for benchmark bonds. But this is not a pure measure of creditworthiness. Bond yields also depend upon inflation and currency risk. One reason why gilts yield

Unemployment the good news side of this recession

Unemployment and the ending of QE dominate this one