Its the Friday lay day blog and a public holiday to boot. So not much today. I wrote earlier in the week a blog about the latest British employment data – Employment growth in the UK but of dubious quality. It was part of a series of blogs I have written documenting the gap between the political hubris coming from the Conservatives about how successful their austerity strategy has been and the reality on the ground. Yes, Britain is growing in the sense that real GDP growth is no longer negative. But in this environment of weak growth the essential conditions for longer term prosperity are being eroded. On Wednesday this week, more information came out to support this hypothesis. The British Office of National Statistics (ONS) published the latest – Labour Productivity, Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2014 – Release – which showed that “labour productivity fell by 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2014” and is the worst sustained performance since 1948 (no growth in the last seven years). Some claim to success. I remind readers that rising material standards of living in any nation rely on productivity growth. Without it societies with ageing populations are headed for mediocrity or worse.