Diamond Jubilee having fun playing with GDP

Hi everyone, I'm an AS student at Havering Sixth Form College studying economics, maths, biology and physics. This is my first blog post on my economy news blog which I intend to update every 2 days or so. This is more so I can discuss (with myself) general news about the UK economy (mostly) and other countries that have made the news recently.



Since this is my first blog post I want to talk about the most significant thing that happened this week.
THE DIAMOND JUBILEE!!!

I thoroughly enjoyed myself during the festivities even with the financial crisis looming over us, however even though this celebration of the queen's reign has renewed everyone's patriotism, it definitely has not helped out the UK's economy, which is in dire need of a rejuvenation. The 2 day holiday that we received has had a severe fiscal impact on the economy since everyone was celebrating the diamond jubilee or else spending time with the family.

What impact this will have on the UK's economy is very hard to pinpoint. The Economics and Business Research done a report in April on how much potential money is lost during a bank holiday, they estimated it was roughly £2.3 billion however being able to quantify how much money is lost is sketchy at best.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport done a report also on the effects and they came up with a figure of a loss of £1.2 billion, but this is also not to be taken at face value since there is a very large spectrum of a GAIN of £1.1 billion to GDP or a loss of £3.6 billion, this is due to the fact that there will be a sharp increase in demand for many sectors and products E.g Leisure, retail, bunting, food.

However there is a fine line between money that is lost and money that is only going to be spent later, for instance, someone may have wanted a plumber to fix their water pipe but since it was a bank holiday they may have had to postpone it. But that scenario doesn't always apply, so it is incredibly hard to be able to create any approximate figure for money spent and lost.

There is also the fact that there are other events at play here, such as half-term and the forthcoming Olympics, so this creates a further layer of complexity since there isn't any definite way to pinpoint the loss/gain in money solely at the Diamond Jubilee.

But just remember that £2.3 billion may sound like a lot, but this is an amount that is made daily so it will have a small effect on the economy either way.