Pensions to rise by £4.54 a week ! but not til next April although Fuel increases are retrospective,and,a lot higher.

Derek Bevan, Huntingdon, England

I posted in the wrong area, re- inflation ,your list came to £10.83 for 2007 and £15.44 for 2008 £4.61 more,I make that an increase of 42.5 % ! so much for the 5.2 %.

Derek Bevan, Huntingdon, England

Have to agree with Ozzy Ozzy - How on earth can Consumer Price Inflaion not feature the biggest consumer item ever purchased. The lack of housing within CPI meant CPI at 1-2% whilst housing doubles inside 3 years. Massive expansion of money supply meant boom followed by bust. Add housing to CPI.

Joe, Geelong, VIC Australia

Forget the Banks, Labour should do something right for once and re nationalise all utility companies immediately .

alan, london, uk

Dead easy for Gordon to solve this one. Put house prices and bank shares into the basket used to calculate CPI. It will be clear then that `over the economic cycle` inflation will be proved to be exactly the same as the `official 2% target`.Time for redn in interest rates & election win next year!

Ozzy, Ozzy, UK

Mr Brown while you are in an intervensionist mood can you get hold of my energy supplier and tell him that huge profits and massive bonus payments are not going to be allowed. The mantra was, sorry, gas prices are tied to oil and must rise. So where are the price cuts or even promises of same?

mike gee, bournemouth, uk

Billions of pounds are miraculously found to bail out the bankers and barrow boys, yet this miserable Government continues to fail those most in need. What an appalling indictment of how pathetic this once great country has become. So much for Gordon Brown's moral compass.

Ian R, London,

Right. Time to raise interest rates. Woops, that's not what's currently happennig is it?

Joe, Manchester,

Earlier today in the Times there was a story about the Norweigan gas pipeline to Britain oversupplying gas to us and this weeknd gas was being sold for £0 a therm - because we have nowhere to store the gas. The "manufacturers" are literally just giving it away! So why are prices to consumers rising?

Melissa, London, UK

When are people going to start understanding that high energy prices are the symptom of inflation not inflation itself. Look in a dictionary Helen Power, inflation is the creation of money and with our current monetary policies we will be in hyperinflation before we know it.

Steve, Hatfield, UK

This is just the beginning.One of the consequences of the global bailout will be huge inflationary pressures. This will be bad for pensioners, people coming up to retirement who will see their pension shrink and anyone who works for a paycheque as their wages will buy less and less. In UK in 18mths

Rupert, London, UK

Strangely, I was under the impression that gas and electricity prices were geared to oil price which, we all know, went as high as $140 a barrel at the time of the increases. The price of oil has now dropped to less than $80 a barreland the price of gas from my supplier has just increased by 34%!

Edward Willhoft, Epsom, UK

Isn't it good if cpi is peaking at the right point for pensioners
trouble is it'll be used to take some money back somewhere else in Brown's version of fairness

rogerb, bridport,

Natural gas (the raw commodity) prices are approximately 10% lower today than their lowest low within the last 4 years. So why are retail utility gas prices "49.9%" higher, and when if at all will they come down to reflect current raw material costs? A new breed of fat cats on the block?

Anthony Wolff, London,

Well done Gordon. Your failure to control the energy companies has caused a great deal of this so, now that you've saved the world's bankers find some similar courage to help us citizens and just as quickly.
Still, it's good to know that us pensioners will have a 5% increase in April - or will we?

A.Williams, Cradley Heath,

This increase in inflation has already been felt by consumers, of which most of whom will have now battened down the hatches for winter and stopped spending.
Competitive pricing in the high street, falling oil and energy prices will reverse the upward trend from now on.

WILLIAM GRIERSON, KIMPTON, UK