Britain’s economy is out of the blocks and heading for gold
HERE’S some news you probably won’t hear on the BBC tonight. Our country has the fastest-growing economy in the entire world, alongside the US.
Our recovery from Covid lockdown has been little short of miraculous.
The economy is forecast to grow by a remarkable seven per cent by the end of the year. Better than China.
Much, much, better than Germany, much much better than France (where the protesters are in the street, ripping up pictures of President Macron. (I’d join them except I have this column to write).
Who says it’s better? Not me. Well, OK, I did say it, just now.
But I’m only reporting the news from the International Monetary Fund.
The UK has confounded their predictions with its recovery from Covid.
A seven per cent growth in the economy is worth a place on the Olympic medal podium, for gold.
The rest of the Eurozone is lagging along on 4.3 per cent. Come on, you Europeans — up your game a bit.
And there’s more good news.
It is beginning to look as if the end is in sight for this wretched virus. In the UK, at least.
A month ago our Government took the very bold — many said disastrous and reckless — decision to plan for a return to regular living on July 19.
Lockdown and social distancing over. Left to the people to decide if they want to wear masks or not.
Kind of back to normal. Come on, you remember normal.
The rest of the world looked on in horror. You will have hundreds of thousands of deaths, we were told.
Here at home, the scientists went doolally. There will be 200,000 new infections per day by the end of July, they screamed. And Labour leader Keir Starmer agreed.
Instead, the infection rate has dropped significantly over the past week. We are seeing just a tenth of the number of new infections predicted by ol’ Keir and the rest of them.
Deaths are a fraction of what they were six months ago.
And those admitted to hospital are in and out pretty quickly this time.
So why are we doing so well? Obviously, Boris Johnson deserves a lot of credit.
He’s not my favourite politician — and I’m no great fan of his party either.
But for all his buffoonery and inability to master small detail, he sometimes sees the bigger picture. Well done, then, Bojo, for once.
But dig beneath the surface and there’s another reason we’re doing so well.
Five years and a month ago, the British people took a momentous decision — to leave the European Union.
HALF-CUT HOBGOBLINS
We were told at the time that the gates of Hell would open and swallow us up. We were doomed!
But, in fact, Brexit is the main reason we are thriving.
It was our vast, rapid, roll-out of the Covid vaccine that ensured we attained herd immunity before pretty much anyone else (and way faster than those in the Eurozone).
We were only able to manage that because we didn’t have to abide by the bureaucracy of the EU.
There was fury on the Continent as the EU responded with its usual sluggishness to the crisis. Didn’t bother us: we were free.
And Brexit has also given us full control over our own economy.
We can decide where and when to invest and subsidise.
We can create freeports with their thousands of jobs, for example. We do not have to run everything by a bunch of half-cut hobgoblins from Luxembourg. So — credit where it’s due.
If you voted Leave in 2016, give yourself a pat on the back.
And if you voted Remain, well, never mind mate.
But if you see a Leaver in the street you could maybe go down on one knee and say: “OK, you were right.”
It's Vard work scoring a point
I THINK Wayne Rooney is beginning to show his age.
He goes off with three lasses with enormous ar**s in a nightclub. Then he goes back to their £60-a-night hotel – and promptly falls asleep.
Meanwhile, the girls cheerfully take photos of the snoozing Shrek. And shove them on every possible social media site.
Wayne has apparently been forgiven for this indiscretion by his missus Coleen.
Though I bet Rebekah Vardy is laughing her head off.
Meanwhile, Derby County are reconsidering Wayne’s humongous contract.
I suspect Derby fans may not necessarily be grieving, as manager Rooney almost got them relegated last season.
Wired about plans
IN another forlorn effort to reduce carbon emissions, the Government is thinking of having overhead trolleybus wires for LORRIES.
Now, this is something I think we can all get behind. Because it means the HGV drivers won’t be able to get up to their usual tricks.
So no longer, when you’re on the A1M at Newark, will you have to put up with a truck driver deciding to overtake another lorry on a steep slope.
He will still be trying to overtake the same vehicle by the time you reach Doncaster. With a queue of traffic miles behind.
I sometimes think they do it only to p**s off car drivers.
Let’s get those overhead wires fixed up.
- CHANNEL 4 gets skankier by the week. Its latest offering is My First Threesome. Ewww! I will only watch this show if they manage to fix up a threesome between Harry Potter actress Miriam Margolyes, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Nicola Sturgeon. Go on – try to get that image out of your mind.
Easily missed in hi-vis
THE latest initiative from Boris Johnson is to have offenders who are doing community service wearing fluorescent jackets so we can all laugh at them.
There’s a problem with this. There are loads of jobsworths ordering people around who already wear fluorescent jackets. But they have not been convicted of any offence.
Also, people on building sites often wear them. So how can we tell the difference?
Here’s my answer. In addition to wearing fluorescent jackets, the offenders should also be forced to sing spiritual songs from the American Deep South.
Then we’ll know they are badduns, as we pass them by, from the chorus of Ol’ Man River.
- CREDIT to Ricky Gervais for getting on board the campaign to ban animal testing. More than 4,000 dogs are effectively tortured then killed in the UK each year. Strapped down and with poisons injected into their bodies. There are perfectly good alternatives to testing our medicines on animals these days. There’s never been a moral case for subjecting animals to such pain and misery.
Not all fun and games
THERE’S only one sport I find more boring than swimming, and that’s Formula One.
And yet there I was, glued to the television as Great Britain’s Tom Dean and Duncan Scott took gold and silver in the 200m freestyle, and gold in the 4x200m relay with team-mates James Guy and Matt Richards.
I swore I wouldn’t get drawn into the Olympics. I mean, the football season’s about to start!
But I can’t help myself.
One thing would improve my enjoyment of the Games, though.
The endless whining about “mental health” is beginning to grate. As a nation, we have become obsessed with it.
Here’s the deal. You need to be mentally strong to compete at an Olympic level.
That is what makes a champion – not just physical prowess but a psychological determination to win at all costs. If you don’t have it, you aren’t a champion any more. Simple as.
Reactor factor
THE Government’s plans to make us all drive electric cars is already running into problems.
Experts reckon we will face power outages because the National Grid simply won’t be able to cope with the demand.
So we need to generate much, much more electricity – which will also have consequences for the environment.
The solution is expensive and controversial. The only real answer to a need for much more electricity is nuclear power.
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We need to commit to a number of small-scale reactors dotted around the country. The energy is clean and almost renewable.
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If Boris wants us all electric, nukes are the way to go.
- MORE than 175,000 drivers have been caught flouting the Blue Badge parking rules. Very naughty. But perhaps it is also a consequence of there being too many disabled parking bays. And the fact that you can virtually get a Blue Badge these days if you’ve got a nasty case of athlete’s foot.