The British economy will end 2012 pretty much where it started. There has been no growth and no real progress in reducing the government's budget deficit. In military terms, it has been like the western front in 1916: the troops have edged forward a bit then back a bit, but after a year of attrition the front line has not moved. George Osborne will not have been greatly cheered by the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, although there were one or two pieces of modestly good news. Growth in the third quarter was revised down by 0.1 percentage points to 0.9%, while the £17.5bn budget deficit for ... (full story)