Drugs And Prostitution To Add £10Bn To Uk Gdp From September

[Democorruptcy]

Drugs and prostitution to be included in UK national accounts

Contribution of drug dealers and prostitutes to the UK economy boosted figures by £10bn according to estimates

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/29/drugs-prostitution-uk-national-accounts

Next addition Imputed S e x?

[shindigger]

Staggering. Desperate? Much?

[winkie]

[Democorruptcy]

When asked how the ONS would come up with a reliable figure for Drugs & Prostitution, David Cameron will reply "We will extrapolate it from our transparent MP expense claims"

[Reck B]

It's a crack-up boob

[Democorruptcy]

At the Tory autumn conference will George Osborne introduce a "Help to Get High" scheme?

[Democorruptcy]

"Vice squad numbers to be reduced to boost GDP"

[FreeTrader]

A link to the ONS's methodology article on how they calculate the drugs and prostitution contribution:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/specific/economy/national-accounts/articles/2011-present/inclusion-of-illegal-drugs-and-prostitution-in-the-uk-national-accounts.pdf

Snippet:

"Following a paper by de Heij (2007), we assume that each prostitute spent the equivalent of €125 per year on clothes and €0.50 per client on condoms in 2007 [Assumption 2b]. These values are converted to £ using the Bank of England annual average spot rate and varied through time using the CPI for clothes and footwear and chemists' products respectively. These values are then multiplied by the estimated number of prostitutes to give levels in each year."

Impressive stuff, huh?

[shindigger]

Have the editorial staff of the Daily Mash taken over the PR at Number 10?

This is bizarre in the extreme. Isn't it?

[Guest]

Aren't the 38 billion of Royal Mail pension liabilities due to show up on the balance sheet in September, as well? This nonsense might go some way to covering that up. Or can they leave those 'off-balance-sheet' indefinitely?

National debt already at about 80% of GDP and climbing.

[John The Pessimist]

Maybe MPs want to claim them as expenses? Measuring something is the first step toward formal recognition.....

[shindigger]

The argument is that as laws are national, some activities get counted anyway in places like Holland. So, if you want to standardise things across Europe for contributions and setting budget purposes, they should in theory be measured on the same basis regardless of national laws.

http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/29/sex-drugs-and-gdp-calculating-illicit-trade/

So we're all ******ed. We know this.

[yellerkat]

The argument is that as laws are national, some activities get counted anyway in places like Holland. So, if you want to standardise things across Europe for contributions and setting budget purposes, they should in theory be measured on the same basis regardless of national laws.

http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/29/sex-drugs-and-gdp-calculating-illicit-trade/

Doesn't Eurostat do that anyway? No need for purely national accounts to be fiddled adjusted.

[Democorruptcy]

Nice timing this.... Question Time day! No need to spend as much time house price bubble denying.

[zugzwang]

Aren't the 38 billion of Royal Mail pension liabilities due to show up on the balance sheet in September, as well? This nonsense might go some way to covering that up. Or can they leave those 'off-balance-sheet' indefinitely?

National debt already at about 80% of GDP and climbing.

I don't believe the Royal Mail pension deficit is counted because it doesn't yet have to be funded. On the other hand, Network Rail is about to be as renationalised in a de jure sense, along with some banking bailout debt.

The ONS plans to replace its current headline measure of Britain's total outstanding borrowing - public sector net debt excluding financial sector interventions - with a new measure, public sector net debt excluding banking groups.

The ONS said that the change - if implemented already - would add 113 billion pounds to Britain's public sector net debt for the 2012/13 fiscal year, when it already stood at 1.185 trillion pounds or 74 percent of gross domestic product.

Some 30 billion pounds of that increase is due to the change in classification of Network Rail, required by the EU.

Of the remainder, 25 billion pounds comes from a changed treatment of the BoE's bond purchases and 58 billion pounds from no longer counting the government's stakes in RBS and Lloyds and payments into a bank bailout fund as liquid assets.

[Democorruptcy]

This could blow our Debt to GDP out of the jacuzzi.

Imputed Rent (rental value of houses not rented out) currently accounts for 10% of UK GDP.

If they add Imputed S e x (s e x you don't pay for) to GDP and then legalise bigamy..... the Debt to GDP would tumble and we would soon have a surplus.

I could have just solved the world's financial problems.

[Democorruptcy]

BOC have a very good business selling cylinders of gas including oxygen.

Imputed breathing?

I've posted on here that they will eventually tax oxygen.

Will National Savings & Investments dare* issue Index Linked Prostitution Bonds?

(* nothing to do with morals just a fear of price inflation)

[R K]

Means Debt / GDP is correspondingly lower.

Can I have my stolen pension back now please Gidiot?

[winkie]

[interestrateripoff]

Good job burglaries, car crime and muggings don't add much value otherwise they'd be in.

Will shoplifting get added as well?

[erat_forte]

My partner suugested imputed salaries of the unemployed be added to GDP as well as imputed sales of businesses that have not been set up.

[Corruption]

Well this has inspired me to give up my crack habit and my nightly curb crawl.

[1929crash]

There was a similar change in Italy last week or the week before.

I wonder if this is the sort of thing that gets decided at Bilderberg?

[LC1]

The real green shoots of the economy...

[thecrashingisles]

Could be a plot to make the Pfizer takeover look better.

"We can put imputed Viagra in the GDP figures for all the people who don't need it. If Pfizer is registered in the UK we can assume any sex globally contributes to GDP!"