Inflation is a personal thing; it affects everyone differently. We all have a view on how high or how low inflation is, and we all have a different story to tell on how much we think our hard-won spending power is being relentlessly eroded by increasing prices. It’s rarely a case of how little that spending power is being eroded, as every little bit takes on a significance even in a low-inflation environment. For many people, inflation is about how much the price of the bus or railway ticket to work went up by at the beginning of the year. Deflation, if we thought about it, could be about how much the price of flatscreen TVs has come down by in the past year — and there’s nothing more deflating than seeing the price of that super TV you bought for Christmas come down further since you bought it.