UK in recession

Look - if you dont know what the definition of a recession is just ask.

It is two consecutive quarters of economic contraction - so you could have grown an extra 10% in the previous 5 years and still be in recession. 

Countries all across Europe have suffered recessions over the past year so the UK is not experiencing anything unusual.

Councils' costs are for materials and labour. They get their finance from central government and rarely get what they need, so product and services go down.
It started with Cameron's austerity but has continued because of inflation and the poor state of the UK economy.
You have not offered any evidence of "things generally set by councils rocketing". What "things"? Rocketed compared to when?

Pre austerity, councils filled potholes, kept and stocked libraries, installed tram systems, built and maintained schools and hospitals and wondrously offered hospital staff free parking.
All things and more, remembered as "the good old days". All gone under Tory control and still diminishing.


NONE OF WHICH HAD ANY CONNECTION WITH THE EEC. The EEC had no power to limit or affect national budgets. I repeat. THE EEC HAD NO SAY IN NATIONAL BUDGETS OR HOW THEY SPENT/ALLOCATED TAXATION, INVESTMENT OR INTEREST RATES.
And it still doesnt.
You would also make a better impression if you stopped insulting others when you make unfounded correlations based on myths.

LOL, you must be thrilled.

If you say you now know what a recession is why did you claim that:

'Brexit has cost the UK appproximately 5%of its GDP. 5% would keep the UK comfortably out of recession.'

Which is blatantly false as you have now admitted.

Well in the last 14 years the Tories have certainly tested to destruction any reasonable notion that they are the party of sound economic management. Clearly their management of both the economy and the public finances has been utterly disastrous. 

I have my issues with New Labour and Blair as you know, but only a blinkered fool who is kidding themselves could deny that for whatever reason, things were so much better for most of us in those years. Until the crash the public finances were in pretty good shape, growth was much more substantial, pensioner poverty was virtually eliminated, child poverty greatly reduced, and we could still mostly  rely on public services. There were far fewer food banks and most working people felt better off than they do now.

Since 2010 we have seen nothing but a constant display of economic shit shows. The Tories in fact were and are so economically illiterate that they do not seem to understand the difference between a household budget and a national one. The difference can be simply spelt out. In a household budget spending increases do not increase income nor do spending cuts reduce income. In a national budget they can do both. Sensible economics requires far more nous than the Tories have shown, in that they need to understand which types of spending increases actually more than pay for themselves in increased national income, and which do not, as well as understanding which spending cuts do not reduce income by much and which ones do. The Tories appear to be so economically inept that they fail to understand such basic economics.

Your need to sugar coat reality and make excuses for our poor economic performance under your lot cannot gainsay the fact that we are now in recession. 

Talk of how wonderful things were in the 5 years before that does not change that fact, especially since things were actually pretty poor then as well. Ever since the Tories came to power growth has been anaemic, and the public are increasingly recognising this for the gross economic failure that it is.

As such the Tories are now so irretrievably unpopular, that a grey card board cut out could defeat them. Which is indeed fortunate for Starmer.

I think this is you rather reaching and reaching for the kind of conclusions you would prefer people came to.

I think most conservatives see it somewhat differently - that the Conservatives have failed to confront the mob it needed to confront in order to have any chance of managing the economy in anything other than 'managed decline'. I think most conservatives see that , to the extent they moved the needle at all, they did 'okayish' on this front. The problem being they hardly moved the needle at all on any front and those needles needed to be moved. A lot of the criticism of the Conservatives is essentially 'negative' - ie absence - that the situation needed a 'bloodbath of the vampires' and they did practically nothing on any important front.

Of course, 'sitting back and letting everything fall apart' may as well be enemy action if you are put in control to fix the situation. There is no point voting for a party that is not going to do anything.