So that's all right. The disturbing little spike in inflation caused by this year's explosion in the price of oil is turning out to be just that.

The moment the cost of crude turns down, British inflation follows, remarkably promptly, too.

Best of all it has happened before "secondary" inflation got going, before pay started chasing the oil price.

It may turn out that way. The stock market has had a lucky year. Maybe we are about to get a bit of macroeconomic luck, too.

Don't underestimate the luck element - or more properly the weather element.

It was the weather --hurricanes Katrina and Rita - that drove oil above $70 a barrel. Now, if you believe people who find reasons for the ups and downs of a volatile market, we must thank the weather - a blessedly late start to the winter in the northeastern US where they burn heating oil in stupendous quantities the moment there is a nip in the air.

Suddenly there is no crisis, no shortage, no fear of one. Brent crude is back under $55. OPEC countries are still pumping flat out, not necessarily out of public spirited concern for the well-being of the world economy, or the comfort of northeastern Americans. They want to sell all the oil they can while the price is too good to last.

It may all look different when they change their minds and turn down the taps to steady the sliding market, or when the first blizzard of winter freezes upper New York state. But neither has happened yet.

What has happened in Britain is less than dramatic.

The downturn in inflation last month was caused by a dip of just 1.4 per cent in the price petrol - even that offset by the airlines' efforts to pass on the prices they pay for their jet fuel. Air fares are among the items whose prices have risen faster than petrol over the past year.

More important for more people, is the cost of heating and lighting your home. Thanks to 16.7 per cent on gas and 29.8 per cent on heating oil, "gas, electricity and other fuels" are going into this winter 14.2 per cent dearer than a year ago. Each item, incidentally went up last month, not down with the price of oil.

So far, hardly anybody has noticed. They will when the quarterly bills start dropping on the mat after Christmas.

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In many organisations that will coincide with the traditional January pay round. Will hard-pressed employees --facing the likelihood of higher taxes from Gordon Brown next March as well as inflated gas bills - put serious pressure on their employers' to make good some of the damage?

They may. But Stuart Thomson at Charles Stanley points out that private sector employers will be in no position to cave in. Their margins have been squeezed too hard for comfort. And Mr Brown's public sector is no longer awash with cash either.

If that is how things turn out there are two consequences.

First, this autumn's hesitant and patchy retail recovery will dry up for lack of spare spending money. Secondly, there will nothing to stop the Bank cutting interest rates.