The IMF and the UK economy, NHS staff shortages and British vs English

More or Less: Behind the Stats

BBC

Business, Mathematics, Science, News Commentary, News

4.6 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The International Monetary Fund says the UK will be the only major economy to shrink in size this year. We ask how much faith we should put in the IMF’s forecasts and look at some of the big economic challenges facing the UK. Also why the headline number of job vacancies in the NHS in England doesn’t tell the whole story of staff shortages. And why has there been such a dramatic change in whether people describe themselves as British or English?

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:05.3	Hello and welcome to More or Less, very much cell A1 in the great spreadsheet of life.
0:11.4	This week the NHS has a buttload of vacancies.
0:14.5	We ask what that means, not buttloads to be clear, I'm speaking figuratively and everyone
0:18.8	knows that's 384 gallons, but what do we mean by vacancies?
0:24.0	According to the census, lots of people say they aren't English anymore, they're British.
0:28.5	Why?
0:29.8	First, Michael Gove famously declared that the people in this country have had enough
0:34.8	of experts from organisations with acronyms.
0:38.4	Well those pesky experts from organisations with acronyms are back.
0:42.6	The International Monetary Fund is making gloomy forecasts about the UK economy.
0:48.3	Last week the IMF released an update to its world economic outlook, or WIO, as it's called
0:53.7	by people in the know, which I think we can all agree, is a vastly more amusing name.
0:58.1	The WIO is a comprehensive forecast of how the world economy will develop over the next
1:02.7	couple of years, including lots of forecasts for individual countries and regions.
1:07.7	Now these forecasts are inherently uncertain.
1:10.5	They're a combination of technical modelling and judgement calls, and they can be controversial
1:15.7	too, especially if you're a conservative politician in the UK.
1:20.5	Last week's release predicted that the UK economy will shrink by 0.6% in 2023.
1:27.4	That's pretty bad, and its forecast to be the worst performance of the seven major
1:32.0	rich economies in the G7 by some margin.
1:35.4	This has not gone down well with some.
	...

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