welcome to the programme. a smaller workforce represents a serious economic challenge. it makes it harder for employers to filljobs. it adds to wage pressures that drive inflation. it holds back growth. it reduces the tax revenues available to fund public services. there is an imperative in helping people back to work. the trouble is many parents in this country can t afford to because many would see their take home pay wiped out by the £15,000 average annual cost of full time childcare for a two year old. right now, uk childcare costs are double the 0ecd average. the only two countries where parents spend a higher percentage on childcare are switzerland and new zealand. when i had my daughter, who s five, i had to quit myjob because we couldn t afford childcare. i look forward to going back to nursing. my plan is to go back to nursing. if there d been more options and if childcare had been either cheaper or there was more flexibility, that would ve definitely been something
abhorrent and had previously been unaware of the claims. we can speak now to laurie at the international communications and financial world affairs commentator. she s in west london for us this evening. good to see you. a rather strange statement, suspending key activities can i suppose you have to understand what the cbi does to make sense of that. maybe you could explain it to les. the cbi is really one of the bigger lobbying groups that polices between business and government. cbi has had a bit of a reputational hit, even before all of these allegations. we will get to those in a moment. a lot of people were wondering whether the cbi had become, had lost its effectiveness, given the last governments attitude towards business. rehabilitated itself a little bit, couple of the things that cbi had been looking for, like childcare provisions did make it into the last budget, but that seems a different era now. so many company picnic companies have deserted the cbi the last coup
not an easy one. i was, but apart from the pain, i mean. so it s been quite painful. but i think at the end of it, it should have been done, i think. were there many mistakes made along the way? of course, you know. and but you know, all s well that ends well. and so i feel like we re headed to a good place. you know, we re roughly breakeven. i think we re trending towards being cash flow positive very soon, like literally in a matter of months. the advertisers are returning, i think the quality of recommended tweets has improved significantly. and we ve taken a lot of feedback from people that have looked at the open source recommendation algorithm. and we ve made a lot of improvements even since that was made open source, and we re going to keep doing that. so overall, i think the trend is very good. and if you want to watch the full interview with elon musk it s available right now on the bbc news website. away from twitter all attention will be on northern ireland t
we start in the us, where the rate of inflation has slowed to its lowest level in nearly 2 years. figures released in the last hour, show the consumer prices index came in at 5% last month, lower than expected. but what does it mean for central banks that have been agressively raising interest rates around the world, to keep a lid on prices? well the deputy director of the imf has been speaking to our north america correspondent, samira hussain, about what could happen next. let s speak to her now. she s in washington. it isa it is a really interesting interview. if the idea that banks need to hold firm on the idea of raising rates until we are clear of the peak of inflation? we raising rates until we are clear of the peak of inflation? raising rates until we are clear of the peak of inflation? we spend such a lona time the peak of inflation? we spend such a long time in the peak of inflation? we spend such a long time in an the peak of inflation? we spend such a long ti