Inflation

The minute Starmer gets in to power, prices go up. Just what you would expect. The Conservatives were getting inflation under control and it was coming down, but as soon as Labour gets in, it goes up again. And we have not seen the effects of the public pay rises yet. Did people realise what they were voting for? 

This is what I hear Conservative supporters saying. But is it really true that prices have risen since Labour was elected, and were going down until? 

On the face of it, yes. The monthly inflation figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that inflation rose to 2.2% in July 2024, up from 2% the month before, and remained at 2.2% in August. That was much lower than a year earlier when it was 6.8%. 

I do not find the percentage rate all that meaningful on its own. If a bag of oranges went up to £2.10 from £2 the previous month, most of us would say they had gone up by 10p, not that they had gone up by 5%. If that continued with 10p increases each month for a year, so that oranges were then £3.20, few would say they had gone up 60%, or that the annual rate of increase had slowed from 5% per month to only 3.1%. We would say “Bloody hell! They’re expensive compared to what they used to be”, and think twice before buying than. 

We need to know about prices as well as inflation to properly understand what is happening. Prices are measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI). ONS calculates this each month by statistically combining the prices in a typical shopping basket. The percentage as usually reported is not the index. It is the change in the index over the previous year. The index itself is rarely reported. It is as if journalists think it would confuse us, or maybe they are confused about it themselves. 

The CPI was set at 100 in 2015. In August, 2024, it was 134.3. In August the previous year it was 131.3. The increase of 3.0 over the year is an increase of 2.2%, which is the inflation figure reported in the media. (Actually, it works out nearer 2.3 than 2.2, but let us not get paranoid). 

Finding the political point scoring irritating, I wanted to understand the figures better. This is my attempt to do so. 

I plotted prices against inflation over the past three years. What is most obvious is that they do not always move together. While prices over the last three years marched relentlessly upwards from 112.4 to 134.3, inflation increased and then decreased again, varying between 11.1% in October, 2022, and 2.0% in May and June, 2024. 

To see why, I imagined a scenario in which the price index remains unchanged at 100 for over a year, resulting in an inflation rate of 0%. The index then jumps suddenly to 130, causing an immediate rise in inflation to 30%. It then fluctuates between 100 and 130 in steps of 10 for the next 24 months. This is shown in the blue graph below. 

The red graph shows the effects upon annual inflation. 

As one might expect, for the 12 months after the first price rise, inflation and prices rise and fall together (A). This is because prices over the second 12 months are being compared with prices over the 12 months before, when they remained steady at 100. 

But the effects then become less intuitive. In week 25 (B), despite prices climbing back to their highest level, inflation falls to 0%. And in week 28 (C), as prices begin to go down again, inflation jumps back up. 

Another quirk is that inflation becomes negative in week 31 (D), and then falls further in week 34 (E), but this second fall is only marginal (from -8.3% to -9.1%) despite a fall of 10 in the index, and much less then the further fall in week 37 when the index is unchanged (F).

The scenario shows that prices can go up when inflation goes down, or down when inflation goes up, and when they do move in the same direction, one can change by a large amount while the other only changes a bit. Prices and inflation do not always change in the same direction, or to the same extent.

These effects occur because they compare current prices with those of 12 months earlier. There can be a time-lag between price changes and their effects. The percentage rate of inflation reflects what was happening a year ago as much as what is happening today. 

Are such month-by-month fluctuations found in the real ONS data? Indeed they are, but they are harder to see because the CPI goes up and down in small steps. You have to look more closely. This third pair of graphs shows the monthly changes in CPI and inflation in the ONS data. 

The largest CPI increase was in April, 2022, when it went up by 2.9. The smallest, actually a fall of 0.8, was in January, 2023. The large increase immediately showed in the inflation figure, which shot up by nearly 2%, but the fall had little impact. Most monthly changes are much smaller, but it is still fairly easy to find contrary movements, as in January and February, 2024, or movements of different sizes, as in October, 2023. 

Returning to the original questions, did inflation come down under the previous government, and will it go up under Labour? Yes and yes. But this begs the question as to whether this is caused by governments, or is it a simple statistical side-effects? 

Statistics plays its part. Inflation was bound to decrease as it fell from the previous highs, and if the CPI continues to increase at its current rate, inflation will climb to over 3% by the end of the year as the earlier falls drop out of the numbers. One reason for the July increase in inflation was that prices did not fall as much as they had twelve months earlier. 

Prices are also influenced by other events and phenomena beyond government control. The peak in inflation in October, 2022, was largely caused by international events. The new public sector pay awards will be inflationary, as would have been the costs to not awarding them. 

Political point scoring will no doubt continue on both sides, but it might be helpful to report monthly inflation changes as well as the annual retrospective. 

I think I understand it slightly better, now.

Professional Foul

In 1977, Eastern Europe was still in the grip of Communist regimes controlled by the Soviet Union. In Czechoslovakia, there had been a crackdown following the liberal period known as the Prague Spring, and subsequent Soviet invasion. the playwright Václav Havel had been imprisoned several times for opposing the Communist system. He became President after independence. 

That autumn, I was in the middle of a few idle weeks between receiving the ‘A’ Level examination grades that had got me in to university as a mature student, working for the summer on night shifts in a canning factory, a walking holiday in Iceland, and starting my new course. One Wednesday evening, with nothing to do, I clicked through the three television channels we then had, wondering whether there was anything I might watch. I caught the beginning of a televised play which seemed to be about university lecturers. I quickly realised it was something special. 

It was Tom Stoppard’s ‘Professional Foul’. It opens with a scene on an aeroplane in which a Cambridge Professor of Ethics, Professor Anderson, is on his way to a philosophical colloquium in Prague to give an invited talk. Another academic on the plane from a lesser, working-class university, McKendrick, forces him into conversation, but Anderson shows no interest in the colloquium, or anything philosophical at all. We later learn he has an ulterior motive for accepting the expenses-paid invitation, which is to go to a football match between England and Czechoslovakia, a World Cup qualifier. 

In true Stoppard fashion, the plot becomes more and more complicated from then on, with interleaving themes and clever word play. The main themes are how ethical behaviour can be compromised by real-life events, and the oppression of individual expression by authoritarian regimes. 

In Prague, Professor Anderson spots two English footballers at his hotel. He is also approached by a Czech ex-student, Holler, who despite getting a First, is only allowed in Czechoslovakia to work as a cleaner. 

Holler asks Anderson to smuggle a thesis out of the country. This gives Anderson an ethical dilemma. The thesis concludes that the morality of the state should be derived from that of the individual, which is a position not permitted under a system that denies freedom of thought. Anderson, however, concludes that as a guest of the government, it would be unethical to take the thesis, but agrees to return it to Holler’s flat the next day, rather than risk him being caught in the street with dissident material.

He calls at Holler’s flat on the way to the football match, to find it being searched by police. They prevent him from leaving, but switch on the radio broadcasting the match. One of the footballers from the hotel commits a deliberate ‘professional foul’ to deny the opponents a scoring opportunity. The police also commit a professional foul of their own by planting foreign currency in the flat. 

Anderson returns to the hotel exhausted, with the thesis still in his possession. Later, Mrs. Holler and their son arrive to ask for his help. They tell him that Holler was arrested on the way home from visiting him the previous evening. Disturbed by their plight he promises to do all he can. It makes him think further about his ethical dilemma over Holler’s thesis, and revise his position. 

After dinner, McKendrick holds forth loudly to the other residents in the hotel lounge. He is clearly very drunk, and enamoured by his own linguistic dexterity. He lectures them about the ethics of professional fouls by working-class footballers. One of the footballers thumps him to the ground. Anderson helps him back to his room and leaves him to sleep it off. 

In light of what he has seen, Anderson re-writes his talk to discuss the conflict between the rights of individuals and the rights of the state, including freedom from search and interference, and whether it is ethical to put someone in prison for reading or writing the wrong books. The worried chairman cuts his talk short by arranging a fire alarm. Two more professional fouls.  

At the airport on the way home, Anderson’s luggage is carefully searched while McKendrick is allowed straight through. Another academic is detained for carrying letters to Amnesty International. On the plane, McKendrick and Anderson discuss this, and Anderson mentions the thesis. McKendrick asks where he hid it, and Anderson reveals he took advantage of McKendrick’s unconsciousness to hide it in his brief case. Another professional foul. McKendrick is furious, which Anderson understands, but concludes that his unethical actions were justifiable in the real-life circumstances. He surmises that ethical philosophy can be very complicated. 

Although the play conveys a menacing sense of state repression, it is entertaining, clever and funny. The quick-witted Anderson character is delightful. It is set in very different times to now, in a country where those who held the wrong opinions suffered discrimination. It could easily return, either there or here.    

This misses an awful lot out, but the plot is much easier to summarise than the philosophy. I did not understand the half of it, but it brought home the fun in playing creatively with ideas, and that it might be part of university life. If my course encouraged just a small amount of this, I was going to enjoy it.  

The play is on YouTube (here). I still don’t get all the philosophical references, though.  

Teenage Part-Time Jobs

Did you have a part-time job while at school, such as a newspaper round or in a shop? 

My wife had both. She took over her brother’s paper round at 14, and was so reliable they promoted her to the slightly better-paid job of ‘marking up’. That meant being in at 6 a.m., 7 days a week, to unpack the newspapers and magazines from the suppliers, and sort them into bundles by house number and paper round. There were 8 rounds of about 30 houses each. It was complicated by the weekly and monthly magazines: The Radio Times, The TV Times, the local weekly newspaper, Weekend, Woman’s Own, The People’s Friend, The Lady, Jackie, Amateur Photographer, The Beano, and more. The Sunday papers with their multiple sections and colour supplements were particularly heavy and troublesome. At least it was warm in the newspaper shed. She did it for about three years. I doubt I could have stuck it at all. It was hard enough getting out of bed in time for school. 

Later, in the sixth form, she had a Saturday job in a book shop, sorting and tidying shelves, serving customers and dealing with orders, which included checking the microfiche for books in print and available. That’s what happens to the able and competent. They get more responsibility. 

I never had a regular job, but sometimes stood in for friends when they were away. Two I remember especially.  

A similar off-licence to where I worked

One was my friend Gilbert’s Saturday morning job at an off-licence. The owner was getting on a bit, and could no longer lift and move the heavy beer crates. The shop was at the end of a terrace on the corner of a side-street, with a step up to the front door, and a secure brick store for stock at the rear. 

You loaded the crates of empty bottles inside the shop on to a two-wheeled sack barrow (hand truck) and wheeled then down the step and along the sides street to the stock shed. There were usually around 10 crates of empties because in those days glass bottles carried refundable deposits of a few pence each. 

Then, the owner identified what he needed to re-stock the shop. 

“I’ll have two of these and these, and three of those, and two of those, and one of those,” he would say, pointing at crates of Hull Brewery bitter, Magnet pale ale, Carlsberg lager, Bass stout, and so on. You stacked them ready to wheel round to the shop, and took them load by load along the side street. 

That was tricky. The full bottles were heavy, and the pavement bumpy and uneven. If you picked the wrong path you would come to a dead stop, and it was difficult to get moving again. Gilbert did it for so long, he reckoned he could draw every slab and crack from memory. 

Once you reached the front, you wheeled the crates up the step into the shop, and re-loaded with more crates of empties to return to the store. 

“Never drink anything left in the bottles,” the owner repeatedly warned. “You don’t know what it is. People spit and pee in them.”

If you were trusted, you were asked to take the week’s takings to the bank on your bike. The bank notes, cash, cheques, and paying-in slips were all in a leather pouch, which you handed to the bank clerk to open and process, and then returned with the completed paying-in book. Very easy, but it did strike me I was riding through town with hundreds of pounds in my pocket: perhaps the equivalent of up to £10,000 today. 

“Don’t get nobbled, will you,” the owner always said when you set off. 

Front Page and Articles in The Sheffield Green’Un of 29th August 1970

The other memorable job was after I had learnt to drive. Dudule did it on his motorbike, and I was one of the few who could help out by borrowing my parents’ car. It involved collecting newspapers from the railway station on a Saturday evening, and delivering them to shops in the villages of Old Goole, Swinefleet, Reedness, and Whitgift, which was 6 miles away. 

Each Saturday evening the presses of the Hull Daily Mail printed a sports newspaper known as “The Green 'Un”, listing the day’s football and racing results with local match reports. Much of it consisted of pre-prepared articles, but for the rest, considering that games did not finish until nearly 5 o'clock, it seemed incredible they could compile and print a newspaper, and have it on the train to arrive 25 miles away by 7. The wholesaler at the station divided the papers into labelled bundles, and you were on your way. I enjoyed that job the few times I stood in. 

However, our school did not approve of part-time work. You could just about get away with a Saturday job so long as you were not daft enough to get a detention, or be selected for one of the sports teams. Jobs during the week were another matter.

One lad, whose dad had a butcher’s shop, was out after school every day delivering meat on the butcher’s bike (basket on front, metal sign hanging from crossbar). He had some amusing stories, such as falling off and spilling meat across the road. He simply picked it up, wrapped it up again, and delivered it as if nothing was wrong.  

It had to end when he was spotted delivering meat in his school uniform, and the traditionalist, old-school headmaster, who had been there since 1936, asked to see his dad. It was inappropriate for a Grammar School boy to be engaged in such activities after school, he told him. It would affect his homework, and if he wanted to deliver meat he should leave so his place could go to someone who would make more of the opportunities. 

What head teacher would dare say such a thing now? And as for newspaper rounds, microfishe, deposits on bottles, cracked and uneven pavements, cash takings and paying-in slips, Green 'Uns, butchers’ bikes, meat deliveries, ... all disappeared, or just about. And it barely scratches the surface. There were also holiday jobs: I worked in a canning factory and my brother was a gardener at the cemetery in which he now lies. They did things differently then. England in the 1960s.

Developing, Printing and a Trip to London

New Month Old Post: first posted 20th July, 2016.

All the palaver of pre-digital photography: it seems as much of the past as typewriters and tape recorders: the business of loading the camera, rewinding, posting off the film, waiting for the prints or slides to come back hoping they will ‘come out’ all right, rationing your few remaining shots to avoid having to buy a new film, ordering extra copies for Grandma, and cluttering up drawers with boxes of colour slides, photograph albums and packets of negatives, and lofts with the slide projector, carousels and the glass-beaded screen.

And then there were those of us who took things a stage further: home processing. For that you needed another whole cupboard full of esoteric paraphernalia.

It was Duncan across the road who got me started. His dad developed his own photographs and had given him a packet of out-of-date contact papers. They darkened in light, so objects such as leaves or your fingers would leave a white silhouette. You could even print crude photographs from negatives in the same way. The problem was that the contact papers would continue to darken until they were completely black all over. Your silhouette or image lasted only five minutes at most.

Well, one thing led to another, and before long I was making proper prints from negatives. I turned the yellow shed into a dark room, got a device for exposing photographic paper to illuminated negatives for just a few seconds, and began to spend my pocket money at the local chemists on packets of contact papers and bottles of photographic chemicals: developer to bring out the images and fixer to make the prints light-proof.

With the idea of taking photographs of London, we went down on the train to stay for a few days with Duncan’s grandma in Hounslow, where turboprop aeroplanes rumbled low overhead smelling of paraffin, and we had to be up early so her night-shift lodger could use the same bed. We freely roamed the Underground on our Rail Rovers (would you let two fourteen-year-olds do this now, naïve as we then were?), went to the Science Museum, saw the Houses of Parliament and The Monument, howled with laughter at The Road to Hong Kong in which Bob Hope and Bing Crosby get fired into space in a capsule designed for monkeys, and got free tickets for the live Friday lunchtime broadcast of The Joe Loss Pop Show with guests The Barron Knights and regular singer Ross McManus – Elvis Costello’s dad. Actually, it was a bit disappointing to find the guests were only The Barron Knights whose act basically consisted of making fun of other groups. A few weeks earlier they’d had The Rolling Stones and The Searchers.

London Airport, 1964 (renamed Heathrow in 1966)

I took my new Kodak Brownie Starmite camera (12 images of 4x4 cm on rolls of 46mm 127 sized film), but none of the photographs I developed at home were much good. Only one commercially developed shots came out, taken at London Airport (not yet called Heathrow): the last frame on a colour film left over from an earlier family holiday.

I used the Brownie camera for the next ten years but with black and white film because colour was so expensive. I could occasionally afford the flash bulbs though: disposable one-use plastic coated bulbs filled with magnesium and oxygen, sparked off by a battery. They melted when fired, leaving ash-filled knobbly glass inside the protective plastic coating.

Black and white film was easy to develop at home if you had a light-proof developing tank, and one conveniently materialised at Christmas. The most difficult part was getting the film into the tank. You had to separate it from its light-proof backing paper and feed it into a plastic spiral which went inside the tank, but you had to do it completely in the dark. The yellow shed was just about dark enough for contact printing – you could do that in the dim orange glow from the contact printer – but film was ultra-sensitive and had to be handled in pitch-black. You had to wait for night time, and then found yourself with head and arms beneath thick bedclothes, trying not to breathe on the film, getting hotter and hotter and gasping for oxygen. You really had to get a move on.

Once the film was safely in the tank the lid stayed on and you could work in daylight. It was essentially the same process as developing contact prints. You filled the tank with Johnson Universal Developer for a fixed amount of time, emptied it and replaced the developer with Johnson Acid Hypo Fixer for around a further thirty minutes, rinsed everything thoroughly with lukewarm water, took the film out of the tank and just like in Blow Up hung it to dry weighted by a bulldog clip to prevent curling. After that the negative images on the developed film could be contact printed (I have archived a copy of the Paterson instruction booklet which shows and explains the process).

It was always exciting to take the shimmering wet film out of the tank to see the dark negatives for the first time and try to make sense of what they were. You could easily have forgotten because the earlier images on the film would often be several months old. When you then printed the photographs it was fascinating to watch the images emerge under the surface of the developing fluid, trying in the dim light to judge when they were ready. 

I was never more than an occasional snapshot photographer, but my uncle gave me his old enlarger for making prints bigger than the negatives and I avidly watched the BBC series Better Photography on Saturday mornings through the autumn of 1965. 

Later, the Brownie Starmite was superseded by a Zenith E, a fairly basic Russian-made 35mm single lens reflex camera for which I bought extra lenses, an electronic flash gun and extension tubes for close-ups. I later tried the more complex process of colour developing and printing but tended to have difficulty with the colour balance because of my colour deficiency. Eventually I moved on to colour slides, and home processing came to an end.

Now, of course, everything is digital and so another of those experiential manual skills has been lost to the electronic world: the exercise of judgement, the physical manipulation of the materials, the strange saliva-inducing smell of the chemicals, the darkroom perfectionism – all gone! Instead, we compile our digital albums, Photoshop our images, blog about what fun things used to be and can be vaingloriously creative without physical skills at all. It’s good in many ways, but not always as satisfying. 

- Maurice Fisher’s website Photographic Memorabilia is a real treasure trove of images and information about photographic film processing and equipment.