What a healthy economy looks like.

A note from the blog author. Dear Reader, Many thanks for clicking on my blog, and I hope you gain something useful from it, despite the poor presentation. When I write a post, I use all the conventional techniques for “setting out”: paragraphs, spaces between them, where appropriate bullet points, numbered lists, heavy type or italics for emphasis. However, when I click the “publish” icon all this disappears and the post appears as one continuous paragraph. For example, this “note” is written in italics and separated from the subject of the post by a two-space gap. However it will appear in normal type with no separation. Why this happens I don’t know: it didn’t until a few months ago. If anyone knows what I need to do to restore normality I’d be grateful if they’d tell me in a comment. THE IRISH ECONOMY (WITH THE UK IN BRACKETS) The following information was published by RTE (the Republic of Ireland’s national broadcaster) on the 18th April. You can see the original article here:https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/0418/1377638-cso-government-finance-figures/?at_medium=email&at_emailtype=retention&at_campaign=website&at_creation=News%20Newsletter%20&at_link=Automated%20Newsletter&at_recipient_list=2&at_send_date=20230418 • Budget surplus €10bn (UK , a deficit of £152bn, which is 6.1% of GDP)* • Growth 2.1% (UK 0.4%) • Inflation 4.4% (UK 10.1%) • Debt/GDP ratio 44% (UK 99.2%)** It should be noted that the Irish economy suffered from the 2008/9 banking crash in much the same way as did the UK and the rest of the world. It has also, obviously, experienced the pandemic, rising energy costs resulting for the war in the Ukraine, other international factors causing world-wide inflation, and all the other excuses parroted by UK government spokespersons to excuse the parlous state of the UK economy after they've run (should that be "ruined"?) it for 13 years What’s more Ireland is governed by one of those allegedly unstable coalitions which result from a proportional system of voting - indeed, it's the best as advocated by theLiberal Democras:propportional representation by single transferable vote in multi-member conituencies. * The gereally acceptable maximum for a budget deficit is 3% of GDP. So the UK is currently double that. ** The generally accptable level of accumulated governmt debt to GDP is 60%. Ireland, at 44%, is well within the range. The UK is almost double it.