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Narrated by James Marriott
Positive growth surprises are so rare these days that we should celebrate the fact that the Office for National Statistics (ONS), searching diligently down the back of the statistical sofa, managed to find some extra growth for the UK a couple of years ago, giving us an upbeat end to the summer.
New official gross domestic product (GDP) estimates on Friday have changed the economic picture to one much more like the “V-shaped” recession and recovery I thought we would see when the pandemic struck. History has been rewritten, so that instead of collapsing by 11 per cent in 2020, the fall was a slightly less scary 10.4 per cent. In 2021, the economy grew by 8.7 per cent, up from a previously estimated 7.6
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