Moneyweek: The End of Britain

[woodburner]

Osborne is at the tory conference talking of reducing the UK deficit (whatever that is), and even having a surplus is this misleading, or an outright lie?

A collapse in overseas income has pushed the UK's 2012 current account deficit – the gap between imports and exports – spiralling to its worst level for more than 20 years, according to official figures.

The worsening situation in the eurozone helped Britain to a £57.7bn current account deficit, amounting to 3.7% of GDP, the biggest shortfall as a proportion of national income since 1989.

[Tarrel]

I think he was referring to the government's budget deficit (government expenditure vs tax revenues), whereas the article refers to the balance of trade deficit (the difference between value of goods and services exported vs imported).

I've always wondered where this figure comes from. For instance, last year my company invoiced around £15,000 of services to a South African customer. Nobody knows this. I submit accounts to Companies House as I'm required to do, but not in a level of detail for such an overseas sale to be isolated and picked up. I wonder how many other small companies are in a similar position? There may well be a "long tail" of many small companies exporting modest amounts, that aren't taken into account when producing the stats.