Quote Originally Posted by Swiss Peter View Post
Indeed. Also service sector growth is heavily focussed on London and the SE. Is this service sector growth making the slightest difference to the life of most ordinary people across the UK? Is the goods sector decline disproportionally impacting ordinary people? I don't know the answers to these questions, though I have my own views.

Aggregate export figures from the government's website actually show a small decline overall for the last 12 month period, though there's not much in it. https://www.gov.uk/government/statis...rs-web-version

James's "UK exports have increased" statement (apart from being factually incorrect) is just as guilty of over-simplifying a complex situation and cherry-picking to support a case as he accuses other people of. Beyond frustrating, indeed.
Oh come on Peter, going from 7th to 4th biggest exporter isn't what we were told would happen, and that is entirely my point. The doom laden predictions garner more attention than the actual facts.

But I make no attempt to proclaim we are in sunlit uplands. I merely say we are okay and reject the hysterical negativity.

I suspect we would be in total agreement on the general overreliance of the UK economy on south East England, esp when compared to somewhere like Germany that has political, media, industrial, financial capitals etc well spread around the country.