Growth rate during pandemic.
Any conclusions?
3 Likes
Only conclusion I can draw is that the UK is at the bottom of the table 
6 Likes
Time to move to Ireland
2 Likes
My home country doesn’t look bad on this spreadsheet, but actually it’s not okay. These numbers don’t tell the whole story.
4 Likes
I’ll take that as this time last year we were told we would be facing the apocalypse with covid and Brexit 
Another way of looking at it is Germany is only just above us and they were meant to and they are meant to be “saints” in how a country should be run.
Obviously I am just having a laugh before people get too serious 
2 Likes
Yeah, Britain had quite an impressive negative growth before COVID made much of a difference here.
2 Likes
I see that you guys are totally focused on the UK situation in this spreadsheet and I fully understand why, however, China is what comes to my mind. Far from any conspiracy theory, but it seems almost ironic to me that they had so much growth during the pandemic, considering all the facts. But, of course, this might be a reflection of previous growth years.
1 Like
That’s because the Asian countries that have experienced this kind of thing before, e.g. with SARS, took strong and immediate action.
China was heavily criticised by other countries in early 2021, when from mid-January they implemented a very draconian lockdown policy that lasted for about 7 weeks. People were confined to their houses or apartments, only allowed out twice per week to buy supplies, every building including apartment blocks had temperature checks and if you had a fever, you were immediately quarantined. At the time, Boris was going on about how China was imposing unacceptable restrictions on people, but their prompt action all but eradicated COVID within China within 2 months. Singapore and Taiwan all had similar strong approaches.
With such low rates in the community then, it’s easy and cheap to do mass testing, as you can batch hundreds or thousands of samples together and only test individual samples if the aggregate tests positive, so they would routinely lock down entire cities for an outbreak with a handful of cases and tested everybody.
China also has a well established, cheap and efficient delivery network, so many goods and services continued operate unhindered during the most severe lockdown, so the online space continued to flourish as before.
But apart from their hyper-vigilence and strict entry controls (everyone coming into the country has to have 14 days quarantine in a secure hotel where their temperature is monitored twice a day, and then another 7 days self-quarantine at home), life in China is basically back to normal. For almost a year now, people have gone back to the normal habit of only wearing a mask when they are ill.
It’s the West who saw how China was dealing with the situation and just said “yeah, that seems a bit over the top, let’s just hope it goes away” or “let’s just get everyone infected and we’ll have herd immunity” who suffered badly, and we only have our governments to blame for that. Compare that to Australia and New Zealand who adopted the China approach early, and you’ll see a similar situation with an economy that’s virtually unaffected by COVID except for the lack of foreign tourism.
10 Likes
Agreed 
2 things people don’t like to accept are 1) we wouldn’t accept the extreme rules and follow them sadly and 2) more importantly we are too scared of upsetting people and being honest in that we are an unhealthy nation. Just look at stats and the virus hits people with underlying issues mainly and we are an overweight unhealthy nation.
It isn’t rocket science but nobody will just say we should eat better and exercise more. All this BS about NHS funding and this or that is OTT, although accurate for other reasons, as 3rd world countries don’t get hit like us and their health systems are not great.
That isn’t to say the government have done a good job at all but it is startling how we ignore the fact that some western countries like ours are unhealthy. Obviously that accounts for a certain % of number only but I would bet that accounts for the biggest difference in stats as many countries in the west also had big numbers.
Edit - The above is aimed at the % that makes us different in my view that is all.
2 Likes
Despite it working (and making sense), we view the policy as draconian only because of the liberties we enjoy (and take for granted) in this country. Here, some people can choose not to wear masks, not get vaccinated, not socially distance, not to quarantine (if applicable), with the only consequence being that they could be fined. Those not doing any of those things in China when it was required by law would have faced much harsher punishment and even faced being ostracized by their community.
3 Likes
For all the amazing things china did to combat the virus which (as far as we know) originated in china there is a clear point to make, slightly made before.
A - of course china were ahead of the game, it’s where the game started and they drew up the rules. If their approach were so successful it would have been an epidemic and not a pandemic.
B- the approach of china was, in many areas, a major breach of human rights, however, we are all aware of China’s view on human and workers rights and let’s be honest: we dont want to become little China.
C- the chinese market is largely government controlled. A communist country operating in a capitalist way but through a govmnt which is largely unaccountable for their actions.
Some of C sounds alot like UK. I do hope we can agree we dont want to replicate the “chinese model”.
I’m sure I could go through the alphabet but by the time i do I’ll have to swap to language as we are all headed that way x
2 Likes
Yet equity is at all time highs and the 10 year is at 1.44. Markets clearly accept the transitory inflation view.
1 Like
Morning Brew just went live with their first weekly Spaces with a selection of popular Fintwit accounts. Might be interesting summary of markets news for anyone else who reads the newsletter.
1 Like
Hmmm, FTSE100 and UK gilts (VGOV) both up by over 0.5% this morning. I guess they’re not inversely related after all!
And we’ll also be on Spaces today 12.30 PM with a special edition of Honey LIVE with @DanLane and @DavidK.
We’ll also be sharing this week’s top 10 most bought shares on the Freetrade app.
Any guesses what is #1?
5 Likes
Please don’t say it was GME
1 Like
AMC?
I missed this! My guess would have been AMC too, anyone confirm 
AMC or GME obviously. Maybe AMC for fomo this month