One thing guaranteed to pull the trigger for even a half-awake journalist is an upbeat spin put on what looks like really duff news. The normal reaction is: “God, things must be bad.” So the “Wet weather fails to deter buyers” headline on the press release for the RICS Housing Market Survey immediately had me worried.
Today’s estimated second quarter fall in construction output of 5.2% presented in the GDP data has caused quite a ripple of shock. Should it?
I have just spent a gruelling chunk of the morning trying to square the GDP figures with the construction output figures, dogged by a mild hangover and a glitch in the numbers. I hadn’t intended to dive into the figures until a bit later, but I took a “have you seen the figures?” call this morning and so was obliged to get the brain in gear a shade earlier than it felt necessary. The thing is that a huge slice…
If you didn’t know what was coming, you could read the latest set of figures for construction orders and output as very promising indeed, with contractors both winning more work and doing more work in recent months. In constant prices, output in the three months to May was as strong as in any quarter since the third quarter of 2008 – you remember the quarter in which Lehman Brothers collapsed and the world’s financial markets went into convulsions. Certainly, after…