Welcome to 2006, Nigel! My beer has gone up more than thirty-fold since I began to drink and the cars and motorcycles I like have gone up to three hundred times their price when I first learnt to drive. Bicycles are following. Lay them in now. In your old age, they will only be bought and sold by the wealthy. As the old song has it, There'll be free beer for all the workers when the Red Revolution comes. But I bet the Commissars will have the Bates and the Hetchins. Thirsty Stuart Tallack in proletarian West Sussex about to cycle to the pub and press his nose against the window in envy.