Ken acquires restraint (for some unfathomable reason)

[reading: Mary Gentle, "Ilario: The Lion's Eye"; recently Robert Harris, "Imperium"]

Imagine my surprise. Unlike every other year, this year's hike in the GLA part of my council tax bill is below inflation.

Year	Annual			Cumulative
	GLA	CPI	RPI	GLA	CPI	RPI
2000/2001				100.00	100.00	100.00
2001/2002	22.7%	0.9%	2.3%	122.69	100.90	102.30
2002/2003	15.2%	1.5%	1.3%	141.39	102.41	103.63
2003/2004	29.1%	1.5%	3.1%	182.47	103.95	106.84
2004/2005	7.5%	1.1%	2.6%	196.24	105.09	109.62
2005/2006	5.5%	1.9%	3.2%	207.04	107.09	113.13
2006/2007	13.3%	1.8%	2.4%	234.68	109.02	115.84
2007/2008	5.3%	3.1%	4.8%	247.10	112.40	121.40
2008/2009†	2.0%	2.2%	4.1%	252.04	114.87	126.38

†March 2008 CPI/RPI figures not yet available; January 2008 figures used instead.

You'd almost think there was some kind of impending election^*.

* Which is a wonderful link, by the way. I'd pretty much given up hope of any journalist bothering to do their job, rather than just recycle press releases.