Recession 100% official now

mustrum_ridcully

Lucylocket01 wrote: »

Yes but not all of it. We are finacially miles better off than most people trying to struggle in the 70's and earlier.
You could not buy jeans and coats for £3 and the supermarket back then. You can buy a loaf for 30odd pence. Compare that to the average wage back then and read the thread from weekend were someone ask what it was like living in the 70's reccesion.
You have a nearly £10k car. Most people didnt have cars or if they did they were old bangers. Look around most cars on the road are less than 5 years old these days.
Not everyone is hp's to the eyeballs either.

Are we really richer: average household debt is £7,650 (exc. mortgages)?

Back in the 70's if you couldn't afford something you'd not have it and save. Now it's just bung it on a credit or store card.

Can't remember who said it but booming house prices and easy credit has given the UK the illusion of wealth.

Dithering_Dad

lol, it takes so long to tell us we're in recession that we're practically halfway through before we're informed!

I'm in Norway at the moment and at lunch when I gravely announced that the UK was officially in recession, they looked at me blankly and asked 'what's that'?

I gave the official definition of two quarters of negative growth and they said, "well, you can't have continuous growth forever can you? It's just not feasible". They then went on with their lunch and talked about last night's hand ball game on TV.

Makes you wonder if we're making a mountain out of a mole-hill. After all, "recession" is just another word for 'drop in income'. Now Armageddon, there's a word to fear!

Graham_Devon

Lucylocket01 wrote: »

Yes but not all of it. We are finacially miles better off than most people trying to struggle in the 70's and earlier.
You could not buy jeans and coats for £3 and the supermarket back then. You can buy a loaf for 30odd pence. Compare that to the average wage back then and read the thread from weekend were someone ask what it was like living in the 70's reccesion.
You have a nearly £10k car. Most people didnt have cars or if they did they were old bangers. Look around most cars on the road are less than 5 years old these days.
Not everyone is hp's to the eyeballs either.

This is the thread I was on about
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1422649

Everything you have said hasn't taken into account the fact that technology has come on a lot since the 1970's. People didnt have these things because they simply were not around.

Not many people heat their homes and water via solar panels at the moment, because it's too expensive and the technology isn't as good as it will be in 30 years. Give it a couple of decades and people will be using this to power their homes. We can't afford the technology at the moment though, just like in the 70's, TV's were more expensive. Just because we have solar panels heating our homes in a couple of decades, it doesnt mean we will all be rich. Some people do have solar panels, because they can afford them, but many more will be able to afford them as prices do get cheaper, and then become standard, which they will.

I don't believe we are better off financially. There are more and more reposessions, thousands more who have bankrupcy next to their name.

Were better off with tangible goods. But then those people you talk about in the 70's were much better off with tangible goods than those in the 1920's. It's all relative, and a plasma TV and DVD recorded doesnt make us financially better off. It's just times move on, mass production of goods move on, and things get cheaper to buy.

Fast forward another 30 years and we will have even more things that we don't have a clue about today, because they are not around yet. It doesnt automatically mean were financially better off.

Ultimately were not better off as a country as the debt vs GDP is a lot higher.

Any

Lucylocket01 wrote: »

And many people have lots of things that they own outright without credit. I know loads of people. Myself being one.

Me too.
As long as I keep my job I don't have to worry about anything.
O.K., I cannot afford to buy new car (well, I am not risking to take a loan for it), but as it was said: My car is a banger, but it's going, I have TV in the house to entertain me instead of going out, I have microwave to heat my meals - leftovers from previous day.

besonders1

Are we really richer: average household debt is £7,650 (exc. mortgages)?

Back in the 70's if you couldn't afford something you'd not have it and save. Now it's just bung it on a credit or store card.

Can't remember who said it but booming house prices and easy credit has given the UK the illusion of wealth.

All thanks to the government. Imagine the old 1980s song "we built this city on rock and roll", It should be for 2009..

We built this city
We built this city
On a cred - dit card!

WTF?_2

Lucylocket01 wrote: »

And many people have lots of things that they own outright without credit. I know loads of people. Myself being one.

Me too - I have a house full of gadgets and needless luxuries that would do any chav proud - however, they were all paid for out of my income/savings.

But the fact is that when you look at the lifestyles that a lot of people have been leading, they were unsustainable compared to the level of income they were getting. Credit was fuelling a hell of a lot of nice cars, nice houses, designer clothes, flatscreens, 4x4s, exotic foreign holidays, second homes abroad etc. The simple shrinkage of credit alone will wipe out a lot of people's ostensibly comfortable lifestyles - and the need to repay the debt accrued will mean that they have to live considerably below their means for quite some time - a huge drop. That's if they keep their income.

For those who find themselves out of work they will just have to make do on benefits - they'll find it very hard to get credit at all. And if they are carrying lots of debt, very bad news for them and their creditors. Plus their defaults will make credit even harder to get for everyone.

Lucylocket01

Sorry Graham but I dont agree. I dont know a single person that is a poor as anyone in the 70's reccesion. Hey my brother in law with all his kids and their benefits look like millionaires in comparison. Their are plenty of people on benefits who are much better off than lots of the ppl on the thread I mentioned. Look at how your nemisis pipkin manages. Thats someone with no debt. My point is even the benefit population are better off than the ppl on that thread

chewmylegoff

personally, i'm not particularly shocked by 1.5% down. it's bad, but hardly unexpected. i just hope the figures from the quarter we are currently in aren't even worse, and the whole thing doesn't end up in a death spiral.

Graham_Devon

Lucylocket01 wrote: »

Sorry Graham but I dont agree. I dont know a single person that is a poor as anyone in the 70's reccesion. Hey my brother in law with all his kids and their benefits look like millionaires in comparison. Their are plenty of people on benefits who are much better off than lots of the ppl on the thread I mentioned. Look at how your nemisis pipkin manages. Thats someone with no debt. My point is even the benefit population are better off than the ppl on that thread

Well we'll have to agree to disagree

One thing your not mentioning about the 70's (and I didnt live through it, but can glean stuff from people who have) is that a LOT of families had one single wage coming in, as women, in a very general sense, didn't go out to work, they raised the children.

So if were going to compare us to the 70's, we also have to compare how many families of 4 people can run the home, bring up the children, and buy all the things were talking about, on one single wage bought in.

It's easy to say were better off. But could you honestly say that we would be better off if the circumstances were the same? Could we really say we were better off if now, one person was the wage earner and one was the home maker? Remember, there wasn't the welfare state giving out all the welfare back then either, and you can get help even with two people going to work.

I'm not saying all families were like this, before I got collared But, on the whole, indeed with my parents, the man went out, earned the wage, the women bought up the kids.

All I'm saying is, you need to compare everything, not just the fact we may have better cars (again these have come down in price, 10k now would be the 70's 1k for example), a DVD recorder and plasma TV.

Personally I feel were just the same as the 70's at the moment, no better off, no worse off. However, we have, as a nation gone crazy on credit to get all the stuff you are mentioning. You can say people havent, of course some havent, but the debt figures show that many many people have.

Nail_Lad

There is some good news, from the National Statistics site:

"Agriculture, forestry and fishing output increased by 0.1 per cent compared with a decrease of 0.4 per cent in the previous quarter."