Britain’s inflation rate has risen from 2.6 to 2.9 per cent, prompting the Department for Confident Arithmetic to announce an urgent increase in the height of the graph.
The Office for National Statistics reported the rise in annual consumer price inflation for July. At the department, Sir Decimal Porridge has already commissioned a chart running from zero to a million. On this measure, the latest increase is practically a clerical error.
“People keep comparing inflation with what it was last month,” he said. “That is an unnecessarily hostile selection of numbers. Compared with the temperature of the sun, prices remain extremely competitive.”
Core CPI, which excludes energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, stayed at 2.6 per cent. Services inflation eased to 3.4 per cent. The Office for National Optimism has placed these figures directly in front of the headline rate, where they perform a valuable role as curtains.
Households wishing to benefit from the encouraging core figure should remove food and energy from their lives. The department concedes this may leave less to be optimistic about, but insists the remaining optimism will be statistically sound.
The next briefing will use a widescreen monitor. Stretching the chart sideways makes the climb look gentler, allowing officials to demonstrate that the economy improves considerably when viewed on expensive equipment.
Sir Decimal has also ordered the vertical axis removed from the public version. “Without the numbers, it is simply an uplifting line,” he explained. “We spend millions trying to get people to feel more positive. Now even the graph is going up and they are complaining.”
Supermarkets are being encouraged to print receipts sideways. The total remains the same, but customers can now describe it as a long term problem.
