Friend-uber-special and I have recently been discussing price rises in the UK and USA. I was therefore especially amused by the arrival of my rates (local council tax) bill. There are five sections with increases of 3%, 3% , 13.5%, 0% and 0%.
Wait a minute! Those two 0% increases are two new items on the bill. Therefore last year's totals were Nil and Nil as opposed to this year's £107.31 and £19.00 respectively So £126.31 increase on last year is 0%. Had they been a penny each last year we would have been talking about increases of 12,631 % and 1,900% or something like that. I'm no mathematician so apologies if I've got that wrong but the idea is sound...
Interestingly State Pensions are to go up in April up by 2.6% in line with average earnings growth - that's less than any of the five sections of the rates bill. And local government pensions are only going up in May in line with the Consumer Price Index which is 2.4%. This rather suggests that everything else consumers pay for are less than 2.6% but I think that's because the cost of televisions and phones is always going down and it's only the inessentials like gas, electricity, fuel, food and the like?
As Mark Twain said "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics"
