Inflation in UK?

The UK population is still growing though and recently topped 60 million. As the disenchanted Tory voters leave for France and Spain, new future Labour voters arrive from outside Europe.

Increasing taxation seems to curb inflation by reducing spending power. An alternative to clobbering the rich is to clobber homeowners when the economy starts to overcook.

The BoE will probably raise Base Rates by 0.25% in January and this should have a controlling effect on inflation as will rising unemployment. Small incremental steps are far less painful than the big hikes under Lawson/Lamont.

I'm with you here, Fredrik (even if I live in Sweden). How the prices for different products and services we use develops seem to have very little to do with the "official" inflation rate. DVD players just get cheaper by the day, electricity goes up and up, to take two examples.

What do they calculate inflation from, the price of milk?

JohanR

I personally think the real rate of inflation is nudging 7%.

They certainly are not going to use any system that includes MPs wages,house prices and power prices. It might get into double figures then. Just use the MARS bar index that seems to track inflation pretty well apparently.

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DVD players just get cheaper by the day, electricity goes up and up, to take two examples.

Perhaps they will give them for free to use their power products?

Howard

Official inflation doesn't take into account increased taxation either.

Whether it's direct personal taxation; income, council, inheritance, capital gains for example or so called stealth taxation; though N.I., pensions, ISAs, stamp duty, insurance policies, petrol/motoring.

Incidentally, you may or may not be aware that since April you've been able to get much cheaper life cover again by taking a pension term assurance policy and getting 22% of the premium paid in tax relief for you, encourages more people to protect their families right? A good idea.

However, Gordon slipped into his speech on Thursday that they decided this wasn't a good idea after all and is dropped with immediate effect (although the Treasury says they are offically reviewing this). So the ones who took one out are about to face a rate hike of 28% on their direct debits.

I can well sympathise with people who are fed up. I never expected any Government to be anything other than self serving but the levels of cynical manipulation on their part simply takes the piss.

Labour is and always was a tax borrow and spend party. The difference now is that they said they'd changed to get elected, and after a term of doing nothing other than ensuring re-election, revert to type. This isn't a shift in policy, it is merely the execution of their long game masterplan to grab an ever bigger share of GDP as well as controlling everyone's movements.

This is socialism by stealth.

Building shiny new schools up and down the land is the pointless and arrogant way in which they spend your money (although a socialist takes the view that every penny earned by everyone in this country is theirs to begin with.) We need more teachers, smaller classes and the existing schools to be properly maintained. Shutting two sixties-built primary schools and repacing them with one very expensive new one is just waste.

No its not, when the spaces available in said older schools are just plain inappropriate to the curriclulm to be delivered within them, the building fabric worn-out and low quality, and insufficient space available to retrofit what you would shuffle into the category of 'maintenance' - which spans everything from decent heating and ventilation through to half-reasonable IT provision. The state of many school buildings in this country is parlous.

What is definitely a problem is the route chosen to deliver replacement schools...PFI.

(yes, I'm an architect working in Education sector)

I retired in 2002 from a school built in 1900 and still in use!

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(yes, I'm an architect working in Education sector)

No you are not a turkey voting for krimble.