Two telling graphs

The Parliament website is a fine source of information on our parliament, its people, activities and such.

In the site are research papers produced by the House of Commons Library staff, which “are compiled for the benefit of British Members of Parliament”.

Each month they release a research paper on Economic Indicators, a compilation from a variety of sources. Here are two graphs from the April 2008 Economic Indicators.

Firstly, a graph on the rate of inflation [click on graph to enlarge], which compares the three measures of price inflation, RPI [Retail Price Index], RPIX [Retail Price index excluding mortgage interest payments], and CPI [Consumer Price Index, again excluding mortgage interest payments, but also council tax, rent and vehicle tax.]

Go on, guess which one Gordon Brown uses. Yes, you’ve got it, the lowest. The one that excludes two items that have experienced large rises in recent years. It’s a swizz perpetrated on us all.

Secondly, Gordon Brown continually refers to government expenditure as investment, so much so that you’d think it was the biggest source of investment nationally. The truth is that the private sector is the biggest contributor to investment, as this graph shows [click to enlarge].