It�s quite straightforward, jake. Simply calculate what you have spent on essentials over the previous twelve months and compare that cost with your expenditure the year before. Don�t forget to include things such as council tax, gas, electricity, fuel, rail and bus fares, and insurance premiums (to mention but a few). All of these things (which form a sizeable chunk of most people�s expenditure) have risen by many, many times the official rate of inflation.
I have carried out these calculations for the past three or four years, and I am hard pressed to arrive at a single figure inflation rate for any of those years.
It is ridiculous to suggest that because the prices of DVD players, i-Pods and washing machines have stayed flat or fallen that inflation is not on the increase. If these things go up in price consumers can adjust their spending accordingly. For the major items I have mentioned they usually cannot.
Perhaps you would have taken less umbrage if I had suggested that the inflation rate was being wrongly calculated rather than falsified. However, I believe there is a deliberate strategy for suggesting that inflation is lower than it is, hence my rather stronger term.