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The answer is expect falling construction to prompt a triple dip – but what was the question?

The answer is expect falling construction to prompt a triple dip – but what was the question?

It’s hard not to get caught up in the silly guessing game over whether the nation will tumble into a triple-dip recession or not. Yes it is totemic. But actually measuring growth to an accuracy of 0.1% is pretty tricky and revisions over time can eliminate or even reverse growth rates. The reality is that growth is very weak, if there is any, at the moment and that is horrible, especially for construction where its growth requires at least modest…

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The positive possibilities emerging from some very negative probabilities for construction

The positive possibilities emerging from some very negative probabilities for construction

There’s very often a paradoxical upside to bad news, as I’m sure the Taoists among us will readily accept. It will be disturbing news if the next set of stats show that measured construction output collapsed in the first of this year. But, weird as it may seem, that might just provide a fillip for real action to support an industry that gets more political attention than it does sensible assistance. Let’s start the story from the growing media attention…

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Be prepared for a very different construction industry when we rise from depression

Be prepared for a very different construction industry when we rise from depression

This is no ordinary recession. This is a serious depression, the end of which still looks to be at least a couple of years away and possibly a lot further. If that proves the case it would have lasted longer than the Great Depression of the 1930s, although the recession would not have been as quite as deep. The well respected economist and Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf recently wrote: “The UK is in the midst of what is set…

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Nationwide joins other indexes to show house prices falling

Nationwide joins other indexes to show house prices falling

It came as little surprise that the Nationwide house price survey should show a fall in July. And it showed a pretty significant fall of 0.5% on its seasonally adjusted series. It had been for many months among the more bullish of the indexes measuring inflation in the UK housing market, at a time when others were showing the market sliding backwards. But like most of the indexes, the Nationwide has had to draw big conclusions from a rather thinner…

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