The CBI has warned that the UK economy is deteriorating faster than it previously thought.  

The employer’s organisation believes “that the mood has darkened in the last two or three months,” its director general Richard Lambert warned members in a letter. Forecasters, including the CBI, had been “over-optimistic” about the economic outlook, he added.  

High inflation and slowing growth have prompted fears of a possible recession. The level of inflation - which most analysts expect to surpass 4% when the July figures are released this week - had taken people “by surprise”, Mr Lambert said in the letter, seen by the BBC.  

The CBI earlier cut its forecast for growth in 2009 from 1% to 0.4%. And last week the International Monetary Fund again revised down its forecast for UK economic growth this year and next year. 

It now expects growth of 1.4% this year and 1.1% in 2009, although the government still expects the figures for both years to be 2% or above.    

Figures released by the BBC on their website show that food prices have gone up by 9.7% over the last year, with bread going up by 13%; cheese 15.8%, milk 13.5% and fruit by 7.3%. They have also reported that petrol has increased by 24% over the corresponding 12 months. 

Labour’s decision to allow 24-hour drinking has led to a shocking increase in anti-social behaviour, new figures have revealed. Public order offences have soared by 136 per cent in the past four years as police struggle to contain a surge of alcohol-fuelled crime and disorder in town centres across the country. When the licensing laws were relaxed in 2005, many MPs, senior police officers and anti-alcohol campaigners said the changes would have a disastrous effect.

Now figures released under the Freedom of Information Act disclose their fears have been borne out by a huge rise in the number of people receiving on-the-spot fines for offences including excessive drinking, urinating and vomiting in the street, shouting abuse at passers-by and damaging property.

Labour’s decision to allow 24-hour drinking has led to a shocking increase in anti-social behaviour, new figures have revealed. Public order offences have soared by 136 per cent in the past four years as police struggle to contain a surge of alcohol-fuelled crime and disorder in town centres across the country. When the licensing laws were relaxed in 2005, many MPs, senior police officers and anti-alcohol campaigners said the changes would have a disastrous effect .Labour’s decision to allow 24-hour drinking has led to a shocking increase in anti-social behaviour, new figures have revealed. Public order offences have soared by 136 per cent in the past four years as police struggle to contain a surge of alcohol-fuelled crime and disorder in town centres across the country.  Read this complete story at :-http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1043272/136-leap-yob-crime-blamed-day-drinking-police-struggle-control-city-centres.html

How many people realise that this year is the 100th anniversary of the Old Age Pension Act, which was introduced by the Liberals, and which received the Royal Assent in August 1908?  This act meant that all elderly citizens were able to stop working for the first time, safe in the knowledge that they would still receive enough to live on.  Today the number of pensioners has increased, and the value of has declined rapidly compared to average earnings, but a hundred years later the principle of the State Pension remains.