Closing post
Time to recap…
The governor of the Bank of England has told MPs he hopes mortgage rates will keep falling.
Testifying to the Treasury Committee today, Andrew Bailey said:
“Obviously we have had a big change in market interest rates in the last few months and so the cost of mortgages is coming down.”
Bailey also told MPs that rising interest rates had not destabilised the financial sector, but that the Middle East conflict was a risk, if it pushed energy prices higher.
Several economists have predicted that UK inflation will drop to 2% in the next few months, which would give the Bank of England the leeway to cut interest rates.
Deutsche Bank predict the CPI rate will fall to 2% by April.
Andrew Goodwin, chief UK economist at the consultancy Oxford Economics, predicts inflation will average 2.1% this year.
Investec see inflation dropping to just 1.5% in July-September.
In other news:
Updated
Eton mess: start of school term delayed as flooding causes toilets to back up
Elsewhere today… the average Etonian parent may be fairly flush, but flushing problems mean their offspring won’t be off to school as early as planned.
Eton college has been forced to delay the start of school term after the toilets in its boarding houses backed up because of flooding in the Thames Water sewers caused by recent heavy rains, my colleague Alex Lawson reports.
The £46,000-a-year private school apologised to parents, saying pupils would begin the year learning remotely online, after the water company informed it of the issue.
Pupils had been due to return to the prestigious boys’ school, near Windsor in Berkshire, on Tuesday after the Christmas break.
“I am very sorry to say that Thames Water have just alerted us to the fact that their sewerage drains are backfilling due to floodwater,” said an email sent to parents and guardians, first reported by Bloomberg.
“The sewers in the centre of Eton won’t cope with the arrival of nearly 1,350 boys.”
