Simon English: Bank's 'hold' vote saves face at our expense

Outlook The Bank of England's Governor Sir Mervyn King calls in the fellow members of the Monetary Policy Committee to discuss what to do about interest rates and whether to inject more money-printing quantitative easing into the economy.

Last time, a mere month ago, the nine-man committee had voted 8-1 against adding to the £325bn QE scheme, which seemed fair enough back then. Since then, the economic news has been mostly bad, which suggests the Bank called it wrong.

Maybe that irritant David Blanchflower, the former MPC member who called it all correctly and rudely refuses to stop pointing this out, was right again.

Should they all reverse-ferret and crank up the printing presses again, for the good of the UK? Or should they stick to their guns out of pure embarrassment, with an eye on future jobs as head of economics as the respected City firm of Deny Everything, Prevaricate Endlessly & Make Stuff Up?

It was a tough call. Yesterday the MPC kept interest rates and QE on hold.

s.english@independent.co.uk