The truth behind inflation

Is Brown right on inflation? TGF UKIP appeals for help: is it correct to say as he did in the Observer and on Marr that inflation is 4% in America, 3% in Eurozone and 2% in Britain?  I was thinking of Fisking the interview – but soon worked out it would be longer than the transcript. And perhaps Brown’s statistics are not supposed to be taken literally, like John Prebble’s books or the EU’s accounts. But for those who care, here’s the story on inflation.
 
It jerks around a lot, and Brown is lucky to have Britain in a dip and America in an upswing last month. The figures he referred to were reported by various countries. But crucially, definitions vary. The best comparable version is produced by the OECD (excel, click here) in its consumer prices index. This gives the closest you’ll get to the truth.
 
First, let’s discard monthly fluctuations and look at the last 12 months (ie, 2007).