Dear Editor

Pensions and the Real Inflation Uplift



I am seventy-one years old, a pensioner. I am also a economist. My qualifications are shown below. As with many an economist I am horrified and fascinated by the events that have engulfed us particularly in last year. As an independent practitioner I am not interested in the generalities that many who are more tied use to hide behind instead of being precise. So as a pensioner I wanted to get a clear view of what the real effects have been on my peers, particularly those of inflation.

Again as a pensioner I am not untypical in several senses. I do not need to claim for my housing and my mortgage is paid-up. Rents and interest do not affect me greatly. So I have four remaining elements to my expenditure – energy, food, transport and miscellaneous, for example, cloths or entertainment.

Energy

As it happens I live in an area that has no gas that is not bottled. So energy used comes in the form of electricity and oil and taking the one that is common to all Britons, electricity, from official figures it shows a 303% rise in cost in the last year.

Food

On the same basis food has shown an increase of 17%.

Miscellaneous

Whilst the general figure for inflation, which would be reasonable to apply to apply to Miscellaneous is currently 10.1%

Travel

And finally there is travel, which for most of my age means a low-use car, probably also paid-for, for which the best shadow is fuel, where the average of petrol and diesel is perhaps surprisingly only 3.75%.

It means that taking each of the categories as equal and therefore 25% the average across them all is 83%. It therefore makes any hesitancy at all in this week’s “fiscal statement” in up-rating pensions by year-on-year inflation to September, the 10.1% figure, not only unfeeling but positively criminal. On the simple figures above the amount paid to a single State pensioner from next April should not just rise from £179.60 per week to £197.74 but to £328.67.

Sincerely

Ian Campbell Whittle B.Sc. (Econ), ACPMM (Cantab)

Tigh na Tilleadh

201 Polbain

Achiltibuie

IV26 2YW