An enjoyable event at the Institute for Economic Affairs: a joint one with Prospect magazine about “Labour and the Cost of Living”.
I posted my thoughts on the subject, if it can be called that, here earlier.
One sub-subject did come up for which I was prepared, but it requires a graph to show the evidence. Gisela Stuart, who is one of my favourite MPs, repeated the old line about the world prices of energy going up and down but the price to the consumer only ever going up.
It isn’t so, and the graph here (courtesy of Bloomberg) shows that it isn’t so in the case of petrol. The forecourt price of petrol is in blue, the price of Brent crude oil is in red, and the ratio between the two is in green. There was a time when the customer did appear to be overcharged, in 1998 (the peak in the green line), but since then the line has come right down and stayed flat. In recent years, profit margins have been tight and constant.
Eagle Eye 