UK recovery lags behind the continent

A string of new economic data suggests the UK's recovery is being left behind the EU's large continental countries.

Data produced by the UK's Office for National Statistics showed the economy unexpectedly contracted by 0.4 percent of gross domestic product between July and September of this year.

Analysts had been predicting that GDP - a measure of all the goods and services produced by a country – would rise by 0.2 percent.

The provisional data compare poorly with that fr...