Gordon Brown needs a new sharpie

The British pound reached a new high yesterday versus the US Dollar on expectations that interest rates in the UK will rise after inflation surged to an annual rate of 3.1 percent.

What is termed "middle class inflation" now sits at 6 percent and for "pensioners", things are much worse - their rate is 8.4 percent.

The Telegraph reported that the latest rise in consumer prices prompted the writing of a letter by Bank of England Governor Mervyn King to Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.


Yeah, pretty dull - it goes on like this for a few pages talking about energy prices and a host of other things.

It's not known if pensioner inflation of over eight percent or middle class inflation at twice the measured rate requires any special kind of letter-writing - probably not.

What's much more interesting than Mervyn's letter is the reply from Chancellor Gordon Brown - not for what it says but for what it looks like.


You'd think that maybe he just picked up a bad Sharpie (yes, Wikipedia has an entry for this too), but then when you flip to the second page it gets worse.


Not having checked on the price of markers in the U.K., the government's office supply budget may have been wildly underestimated for the current fiscal year and they are just making do with what they have.