Chris Johns

William Hague, the ex-leader of the Conservative Party here, writes a weekly column for The Times, and he regularly regales us with stories about when he was in the Foreign Office and various other things.

parts of the British government negotiating with the Iranians was tortuous.

Even when you've reached agreement with them, they spend another two years arguing over the details.

So the idea that Donald Trump could negotiate a quick deal with these people if the past is any guide to the future, I mean, they're going to be at this for a very, very long time.

It's incredibly important.

I mean, a lot of the numbers that you quoted there, Jim, to somebody that's not steeped in this sort of geeky world that you and I live in, they don't sound that impressive.

But a one percentage point increase in productivity, a 0.1% increase in productivity, compounding over many, many years is enormous.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist is famous for lots of things.

But he once said,

productivity growth isn't everything in economics, but it's almost everything.

And it's the only thing that leads to living standards increasing for the likes of you and me and everybody else.

Productivity growth affects everybody.

for good or bad.

And the key factor that I think you cited there was that energy price thing.

Because we're all laboring under energy costs that just keep going up.

The United States, it too has energy costs going up.

Today, Tuesday, the headlines across some US media are...

A gallon, a US gallon of petrol or gasoline is now up at $4.50 in many places in the United States, sometimes more actually.

Here in the UK, I just worked it out, a US gallon in my local garage costs over $9.00.

So we're paying more than double at the retail level to drive our cars.