Sometime in or around 1972 I filled my car with petrol. At that time petrol was still sold in gallons.
The price was something like 45 pence a gallon.
I was so shocked that I declared that when it got to 50 pence I was selling the car and giving up driving.
Yesterday, thirty years after I made that threat, I put four gallons of fuel into the car, the cost? £30.
Fuel inflation has made petrol and diesel as expensive as gold or diamonds.
I didn't buy my first house until 1987, it cost £30K.
But the first house I lived in in 1969 cost £3150 it was a three bed semi, newly built on a modern estate in a village near Doncaster.
The house I live in now is smaller than both those houses and is valued at over £100K.
House price inflation has made houses almost unaffordable for the first time buyer.
When I was first married my salary was approximately £60 a month and our housekeeping accounted for maybe half.
Wage and food inflation has made those figures look unbelievable today, my grandchildren think of the olden days, I think it was the sixties for goodness sake, they were the modern times.
Apparently the Big Society Committee has not met for a year.
So it looks like that project has not achieved lift off, Gareth Thomas a Labour MP was quoted in the Financial Times as saying that David Cameron's 'interest in bringing communities together to prosper was just a mirage'.
Meanwhile the IDS as he is known continues to press for a welfare cap in the face of hostility and amendments from Bishops and Lib Dem Peers.
I am glad that the Bishops have finally caught on and up because I was campaigning as part of an organisation I helped to found in the early 1980's Church Action on Poverty, that Child Allowance should not be included in the income calculation for Supplementary Benefit because to include it was regressive and affected children in the poorest families adversely, it's only taken thirty years but we have got there finally.
The problems we face as a country are complex and as in the Eighties the Government and the Prime Minister are looking for simple solutions to complex problems.
A previous Archbishop used to be a Vicar in Durham, he re-ordered the Church which was in the Market Place in Durham City, he published a book about his work in Durham and called it, The Church in the Market Place.
There is an apocryphal story about that book coming to the attention of the then PM.
The problem with inflation is that it is a regressive tax on the poorest.
Whether I pay £2 or £30 for my four gallons of fuel I can only drive the same number of miles.
Whether I pay £3K or £300K for my house, I still only have a place to live.
Whether I spend £5 or £500 a week on shopping, I still only get three meals a day.
But the effects of inflation sap energies, corrode the will and render people socially and economically lethargic.
Partly as a result of the shifting of the tectonic plates of global politics and economics, partly as a result of the collapse of belief in politics, largely as a result of the New Labour Project, people are no longer convinced by the rhetoric of either left or right.
It will be interesting to see what empty promises are rehearsed in the next round of Leader's Debates before the next election and whether anyone bothers to watch.
The price was something like 45 pence a gallon.
I was so shocked that I declared that when it got to 50 pence I was selling the car and giving up driving.
Yesterday, thirty years after I made that threat, I put four gallons of fuel into the car, the cost? £30.
Fuel inflation has made petrol and diesel as expensive as gold or diamonds.
I didn't buy my first house until 1987, it cost £30K.
But the first house I lived in in 1969 cost £3150 it was a three bed semi, newly built on a modern estate in a village near Doncaster.
The house I live in now is smaller than both those houses and is valued at over £100K.
House price inflation has made houses almost unaffordable for the first time buyer.
When I was first married my salary was approximately £60 a month and our housekeeping accounted for maybe half.
Wage and food inflation has made those figures look unbelievable today, my grandchildren think of the olden days, I think it was the sixties for goodness sake, they were the modern times.
Apparently the Big Society Committee has not met for a year.
So it looks like that project has not achieved lift off, Gareth Thomas a Labour MP was quoted in the Financial Times as saying that David Cameron's 'interest in bringing communities together to prosper was just a mirage'.
Meanwhile the IDS as he is known continues to press for a welfare cap in the face of hostility and amendments from Bishops and Lib Dem Peers.
I am glad that the Bishops have finally caught on and up because I was campaigning as part of an organisation I helped to found in the early 1980's Church Action on Poverty, that Child Allowance should not be included in the income calculation for Supplementary Benefit because to include it was regressive and affected children in the poorest families adversely, it's only taken thirty years but we have got there finally.
The problems we face as a country are complex and as in the Eighties the Government and the Prime Minister are looking for simple solutions to complex problems.
A previous Archbishop used to be a Vicar in Durham, he re-ordered the Church which was in the Market Place in Durham City, he published a book about his work in Durham and called it, The Church in the Market Place.
There is an apocryphal story about that book coming to the attention of the then PM.
The problem with inflation is that it is a regressive tax on the poorest.
Whether I pay £2 or £30 for my four gallons of fuel I can only drive the same number of miles.
Whether I pay £3K or £300K for my house, I still only have a place to live.
Whether I spend £5 or £500 a week on shopping, I still only get three meals a day.
But the effects of inflation sap energies, corrode the will and render people socially and economically lethargic.
Partly as a result of the shifting of the tectonic plates of global politics and economics, partly as a result of the collapse of belief in politics, largely as a result of the New Labour Project, people are no longer convinced by the rhetoric of either left or right.
It will be interesting to see what empty promises are rehearsed in the next round of Leader's Debates before the next election and whether anyone bothers to watch.
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