How can inflation be "only 3.8%"?

[SEB]

If everything is doom & gloom, with everyone feeling the pain in their pockets, how do we get 3.8% inflation?

[jta]

Because it's artificial, the figures the guvmint uses bear no relation to the real world.
It's the same thing with unemployment figures, when the numbers got too big for comfort they made all sorts of other labels for large sections of the population and shoved all the inconvenient unemployed into them, thus reducing the headline numbers.
This crowd of incompetents has done exactly as I expected when Blair won office. Unfortunately I cannot see a lot of difference between any of the political parties at the moment so I don't expect the next lot will be any better.
Got to stop now, the Daily Mail has just arrived!!!!

[C&S]

Food and fuel prices, which are globally influenced.

[Pelican eats pigeon]

Speculators moving into food and fuel from property, to be more specific. We now have an 'Oil price bubble', apparently.

[gdturn]

It all depends on how much money you have and what you spend it on. You can work out your personal inflation figure by looking at the things you bought last year and finding out what they cost now. If you're loaded and bought lots of electrical goods your inflation figure will be low because the telly you bought last year will probably be cheaper this year.

But if you're not so well off and spend most of your money on food and fuel then your inflation figure will be very high.

The government tries to measure 'typical' (haha) inflation by choosing a basket of goods and comparing what it cost last year to this year. But there are things in there that aren't everyday purchases (like TVs) that bring the average down.

Don't know about you but I haven't bought a telly for six years.