For the sake of keeping foolish people's 'idea' that they're rich because of the price of their homes & being influenced by government not to effect the 'happy' factor, the BOE has failed to do what it should have months ago and that was raise the rate to 5.5%. Now it looks increasingly likely that rates will have to hit 6% in order to have a hope of regaining control of inflation. If rates had been raised a few months back then we could have probably kept inflation in check with rates at 5.5% - 5.75% this year. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind in the long run. I know manufacturing may suffer but the government should do what other countries do to protect them & that is give them more incentives and penalise those who import goods say with higher duty rates.

Bob Smith, London,

Brown and King have lost "control" of the economy. Even CPI is more than 50% higher than the target figure. The truth is that the big Banks now control the economy, the BofE and Government have little control over the rampant expansion of credit which will bite everyone on the arse sooner or later. Brown and King are complicit in this but their pensions are safe, unlike the rest of us.

john smith, manchester, UK

Inflation is M4 money supply - currently 14%.

This tide of money is pushing all asset prices (homes, art, wine, Bulgarian ski chalets, and the next so-called property hot-spot).

The Fed is doing the same - they don't even publish their money supply figure.

Who would be so arrogant as to abolish boom and bust? UK plc is looking down the dip on the roller-coaster!

jonathan tedd, marlow, UK

I am grateful to the financial staff of The Times for their faithful inclusion of the RPI data when inflation figures are published by the Government. This is at least closer to the actual inflation we all experience as home owners and tenants and gives the lie to the artifice of CPI which is another Brown distortion and product of spin.

B GRIFFIN, Leatherhead , Surrey

Interest rates are a terribly blunt instrument with which to control inflation. Putting them up to control house prices hinders manufacturing and exports. Putting them down to help exporters encourages private individuals to borrow more than they can repay.

Why can't we have 3 separate interest rates: one for business borrowing, one for domestic mortgages and a third for personal borrowing? Then the MPC would be able to really "fine tune" the economy without damaging innocent bystanders.

Ernie Warner, Faversham, England

If interest rates are the only tool to bring inflation down then it's doom and gloom if the BOE try to use it too much. There is no way just a quarter point rise (or even half point) would have any immediate effect on spending or inflation because the items causing inflation are at the mercy of other countries (namely OPEC) and it doesn't matter how much the MPC raise base rates, inflation will keep going up because of price of oil, so unless we all stop driving for months and let a surplus of oil stocks to build up then the only way to stop inflation is all out recession caused by 7% or more base rates. What are the chances of that - nil I hope. I think before that happens, the next chancellor should just say that we can't control petrol therefore the target rate should be .... CPI 3% and hey presto, base rate rises averted ..... at least until OPEC is disbanded and there is true competition and market price for sale of crude oil and no cartel. OPEC should be banned!

Max, Manchester,

The CPI (Consumer Price Index) is a neat 'smokescreen' concealing the true cost of living. The Retail Price Index (now concealed) omits things like council tax and property maintenance costs.

How I wish that Mervyn King spelt out the reality of getting by on a low, or fixed income, sans the beaucratic nightmare of 'tax credit' hoops to jump through.

All the while, MP's of whatever colour exist on an average income, including allowances, of £204,000!

Is it any wonder that they are out of touch; and the electorate is disilluisioned?

Alan Harvey, Fleet, UK

The last time the RPI was this high (forget CPI - 'unfit for purpose') interest rates were, at best, 7.5% and that in an economy on its way down. The Bank has allowed itself to be caught between a rock and a hard place - interest rates need be substantially higher to curb excess borrowing but, by doing so, the housing market would go into reverse and take the economy with it!
Simply ask Eddie George - he engineered it!

Rob, Isle of Wight, UK

Real interest rates have been far too low for far too long and we are now starting to reap the consequences of this reckless policy.
The idea that inflation will just magically fall back to 2% is wishful thinking. Anyone who lived through the 70s knows just how hard it is to get the inflation genie back into the bottle.
Boom is always followed by bust and this time will be no different. You only have to look at how many people are up to their eyeballs in debt to realise that the pain when it finally arrives will be widespread.

Ian, Cambridge, UK

It is obvious and it has been for some time that a sharp jolt is needed. The May increase should be 1/2% not 1/4%. This would be far more effective than a series of 1/4% rises.
It is imperative that inflation is brought under control.

D E C Easterbrook, Sidmouth, England

James,
When was the last period of such low and sustained inflation. I think Gordon Brown and The Bank of England should be congratulated for doing a good job. The oil and energy price problems are not a domestic issue they are driven by global problems.
House prices will continue to rise simply because there are not enough houses to house all the single families. So many young men and women are chosing to live on their own which 10 years ago was behond their means. Now most people are better off and are chosing to buy houses.
I remember living through the boom and bust era and what we have now is oh so different and a damn sight better.

Ray Atkins, Glasgow, UK

We calculated inflation by counting food and manufactures, which were getting cheaper due to surpluses and China. However, except for the very poorest, those only account for a small proportion of expenditure.

Malcolm McLean, Bradford, UK

The CPI hitting 3% for the first time in nearly 10 years is hardly a return to boom and bust. Mr Blyth Currie is clearly fortunate enough to be too young to remember the 70s and 80s when inflation rates that low, or even an RPI figure (which was the preferred currency then) of 4.8%, would have been welcomed by many a frantic chancellor seeing inflation soaring towards double digits. The interesting question is how effective the recent and forthcoming incremental increases in interest rates will be in keeping our apparently insatiable thirst for credit under control.

J Thompson, Northampton,

Why are we being so complacent/
The RPI for March annualised is 7.7%
For March February it is 8.3%
For March January it is 10.4%
It is back to the Seventies. What of the pensioners? Where will the pound go?
Which newspaer will pub;ish these figures.

J R Harmer, Brentwood, Essex

It's the ordinary people on fixed incomes that suffer. Gas, electricity prices have gone through the roof and nobody fights our corner. Those companies should give the money back.
I am not spending on unnecessary thins, and yet again I will suffer. While those who can put it on their charges just do that and moved on.

There has to be another way.

I'm not sure who or where middle England is, but if it is the ordinary people who go out to work day after day, they are near breaking point, and if they collapse who will take up the slack, the unemployed, the rich, the MPs?

Nardia Foster, Enfield, London

It is a fact that no public servant under this government loses their job due to incompetence. Examples include Des Browne, Pat Hewitt and now Mervyn King. Over the last two years, inflation has been creeping insidiously towards and inexorable above the level requiring a letter from the Governor of the Bank of England to the Chancellor.
There is zero accountability at the heart of this government where there should be zero tolerance. The Bank of England need a new Governor and maybe this country deserves a new Government.

Rick, London, England

So Finally after the years of artificially low interest rates and the chancellor taking credit for what was actually a global phenomenon,the real picture has arrived.
We all knew inflation was spiralling out of control because house price have rocketed in the last decade Gordon Brown was chancellor.But alas he and the "not so independent" Bank of England said this time it was different.How wrong they now look.
Interest rates may well end up back in double figures before this mess is sorted out.
Yes my fellow countrymen,the British disease of "Boom and Bust" is alive and kicking.

James.P. Blyth Currie, London, UK