The rate of inflation should be calculated taking into account the rising price of other things too. Why set an inflation limit when you are simply going to change the way inflation is calculated to avoid having to openly exceed it. Inflation surely cannot be as low as it's made out to be?

In 2003 the measure was changed from the RPI to CPI, to be more in tune with Europe. We are not in the Eurozone.
In fact, I thought that one of the reasons that we did not adopt the Euro was that we would not be able to set our own interest rates!

I believe that the use of CPI gave rise to incorrectly low interest rates, which was the main fuel for our overpriced housing market. And we have not even begun to account for house price depreciation (the amount that houses have actually gone up in value).

A generation of young people will not be able to owntheir own property, and remember, rents go up in line with property prices. A young person in our so called 'full empoyment' earning the average wage will be now paying two thirds of their income in rent.

A final sobering thought; in my own case I was forced to sell my house in 1997. I am now paying twice what my mortgage would now have been. This is mainly accounted for in increase of house prices.

I was lazy in my typing. I was picking up on John's point – "the foolish decision to shift the target rate from the RPI to the CPI in 2003. This was a deliberate and misguided politcal decision to try to bring us more in line with the Euro".

As for the actual percentage targets, I agree that's another matter. But the fact that our targets are higher than Europe's with consequently adverse effects on our inflation rate neither supports nor undermines John's thesis.

For example, we all know that the Japanese economy suffered from severe deflation in the 1990's and that growth was very poor indeed and still is. Simply to compare the level of Japanes interest rates with that of the UK establishes absolutely nothing of interest.

Again, comparing UK interest rates unfavourably to Euro rates and then later criticising the government for adopting the same targets as the ECB also makes no sense in the development of your argument. The ECB must be doing something right if, as you say, they are succeeding better than we are.

Your argument seems to be that the Bank of England made a mistake by not interpreting the new inflation target well enough and by initially setting interest rates too low. To go from this to say that higher interest rates are the result of some foolish Euro dream simply does not follow!

In fact your argument is so long on bias and short on logic that one wonders whether your credentials as a Eurosceptic have any valid economic underpinning. I'm actually a radical Eurosceptic because I believe that while the Euro iself will be a long term success we already benefit from the fact that most of the continent has adopted it and we need deal only with one currency in our business with european nations. By staying out we retain that advantage while being free to fine tune our economy as we wish. This, of course, depends on how well we fine tune and ,in this regard, your criticism of the BofE may have merit.

On a general point, why do Eurosceptics like you never criticise the USA for having one currency? Wouldn't California be better of with its own currency, or New York or Alaska? The answer is that, of course, it works there. However, the USA is also a unified political state. I think that many Eurosceptics see the Euro as the thin edge of the political wedge. This is a perfectly valid objection to the Euro but it is not helped by spurious economic analysis in its support.