Is the coronavirus recession as bad as it looks?

We are in the worst recession in living memory for the UK with GDP plummeting by 22.1 per cent in the first six months of 2020. But strange as it may sound, does that matter? We knew things would be terrible as the coronavirus lockdown pressed the pause button on the economy and people’s lives. Shops were shut, businesses were shuttered, everyone who could worked from home, almost 10million people were furloughed, international travel was halted, property sales were frozen and children didn’t go to school for four months. If you’d have predicted that was what 2020 would bring last New Year’s Eve, nobody would have believed you and they might even have called for help. So, it should come as no surprise that the ONS released figures this week showing that this year’s astonishing actions crashed the economy – although the fact that the UK suffered more than any other major economy other than Spain is a cause for concern. The question is, what next? On this week’s podcast, Simon Lambert and Georgie Frost dig into the GDP figures to find out why the UK was hit so hard, whether we can read anything into the ONS’s figures and what to watch out for to identify if the economy is recovering better or worse than expected. Also on this week’s show, they discuss how amid all that carnage some households are getting their finances on track, how to buy a property in pandemic if you are an aspiring first-time buyer and how to keep your pension on track. And finally, the Government in its wisdom has decided to push on with getting Brexit fully done - even if it means no trade deal by the end of the year – and that will mean imported cars get more expensive. But fear not, new car buyers, because we’ve got the best British-built options instead – from a Nissan Juke shopping cart, to a gorgeous McLaren and the wonderfully bonkers Ariel Atom.

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