The Bank of England has boxed itself into a corner. It has led the City to believe that interest rates will rise later this week and will pay a price if expectations are not met. Sterling, which has been looking sickly in recent weeks, will get a real thumping on the foreign exchanges if official borrowing costs remain at 0.5%.

In truth, there is no real reason to push up interest rates to 0.75%. The recent official figures for earnings, which some monetary policy committee members have been citing as a reason to act, have shown pay growth decelerating. Inflation is lower than the Bank thought it would be three months ago and the latest set of retail sales figures were weak.

The Bank’s data for credit growth provides another reason to be cautious. The growth of consumer borrowing, excluding mortgages, is rising at an annual rate of almost 9% as consumers charge spending to their credit cards.

There have been times when strong growth in unsecured borrowing was a sign of an overheating economy, but this is not one of them. As the Office for National Statistics reported last week, the average household spent £900 more than it received in income last year, and covered most of the shortfall through extra borrowing.

The last time household finances were in deficit was during the boom of the 1980s, when the economy was in a completely different place. Wages were rising far faster than prices, resulting in strong real income growth, and rapidly rising house prices generated a feelgood factor.

In 2017, by contrast, living standards fell and the housing market stagnated. Households are not borrowing because they are brimful of confidence. In many cases they are borrowing to make ends meet.

The MPC knows this and will go out if its way to reassure consumers and businesses that any further policy tightening will be both modest and gradual. Thursday’s rate rise is supposed to prevent wage inflation from taking off, underpin sterling and boost the Bank’s credibility without harming growth.

The next eight months will see Brexit negotiations come to a climax and the inevitable period of uncertainty means this is the MPC’s last opportunity to raise rates for some time. Yet the fact remains that this is an ill-timed and risky venture, not least for the millions overburdened with debt.

Countrywide boss spreads himself too thin

Britain’s biggest chain of estate agents, Countrywide, is putting the finishing touches to a call for up to £125m of emergency finance. A sharp downturn in the number of house sales and purchases has hit revenue, competition from online competitors is intense and it has debts of £200m. There have been four profit warnings in the past eight months .

The fundraising exercise was originally supposed to have been announced last week but was delayed, possibly because its executive chairman, Peter Long, was tied up dealing with problems at Royal Mail, another company he chairs.

On the face of it, Long is the answer to Britain’s productivity problem. He has been running Countrywide since the turn of the year, when he replaced the chief executive on the grounds that “things aren’t working out as we expected”. He is also deputy chair of the supervisory board of the global tour business TUI Group, and until a fortnight ago he was also chair of Parques Reunidos, a Spanish-based theme park and tourist attraction group with nearly 70 attractions in all corners of the globe.

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But there is keeping yourself busy and there is trying to juggle too many jobs at once. Long falls into the second category. Just over a third of Royal Mail investors voted against him staying on as chairman at the recent AGM on the grounds that he was over-boarding, a polite way of saying he was not devoting enough time to the job. In truth, the surprise was that there were not more dissenting voices.

Countrywide’s share price has dropped by 70% in the past year. Knocking the company back into shape is a full-time job on its own.

Sick as a parrot over World Cup?

The Office for National Statistics says the number of days taken off sick has almost halved in the past quarter of a century from an average of 7.2 days in 1993 to 4.1 days in 2017, the lowest on record.

That figure could rise in 2018, though, because by all accounts Britain suffered an epidemic of summer flu and tummy bugs between mid-June and mid-July. Outbreaks were particularly virulent when England were playing in the World Cup.