Interest rates are not going up just yet, but the Bank of England is preparing the ground for the first move in many years, as David Smith reports
It is a long time since interest rates last went up a very long time. How can I put it into perspective? Well the last time it happened on Thursday 5 July 2007 (when the Bank rate rose from 5.5% to 5.75%) we were only a year on from two World Cups ago (the 2006 tournament was in Germany). We were only just through the Tony Blair era. He had stepped down as prime minister less than a fortnight before.
The last time interest rates changed at all – they came down quite rapidly after 2007 – was in March 2009 when they were...
