The British economy grew just 0.2% last quarter, much lower than government and OBR estimates and in-line with City forecasts.

The news is likely to put pressure on George Osborne, lead to another round of Quantitative Easing and will force the OBR to downgrade its growth forecasts for 2011, which currently stands at 1.7%.

Over the last 12 months the UK economy has grown by just 0.7%.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011 ... e-coverage

The Chancellor claims he's sticking to his "economic plan" - sadly it looks like Downing Street has no plan, and that continuing to make cuts could be the road to ruin.

What with all the news about job losses recently, we should just be glad it grew at all.

If the public sector jobs have actually started to go (or is it still just talk?) then it's even more impressive as it must mean teh private sector is picking up the slack (even if it is "only just").

It's not really started happening yet, although the talking is pretty much done. If the private sector is only just 'keeping our head above water' now, it's going to be pretty freaking grim about a year from now.

Jon

Yes and only around 30 000 extra brits employed, the rest were all born abroad. This sluggish growth is before the cuts have taken place though some preliminary changes are starting to impact. I cannot believe that the Royal wedding is now an excuse for it performing so badly. There were plenty of tourists and it was just one day, yet many would work anyway.

The royal wedding is used as a mitigating factor due to the fact of the timing many people took advantage to take a few days off and basically have half of April off.

Yes but people would have used up their holiday entitlement. Also GDP measures activity so even if everyone stayed at home it would only fall if they did not do anything.