Your next gas bill is likely to be 16 per cent more than the one this time last year. Electricity will be the best part of 12 per cent up.
If they are less you have a good deal - don't bank on it lasting. If you live in the country and stuck with oil central heating, the damage is upwards of 25 per cent.
It is the same with the underlying cost of petrol, though you barely notice. It is masked by its enormous tax, and Chancellor Brown's nervous decision to waive the extra 3p a litre he proposed in last year's Budget.
But if your car needs anything much in the way of professional care you may be surprised to learn that the cost of motor maintenance has risen only 6.3 per cent since last winter. All round, indeed, motoring is a smidgeon cheaper, if you believe National Statistics, thanks to lower used car prices, and a recent dip in insurance premiums.
The first question is 'do we believe National Statistics and its finding that prices have risen by just 1.6 per cent over the past year, or 3.2 per cent, or 2.1 per cent?' - depending on which index you choose. The message from them all is that a mini-spurt in inflation starting in October has stalled or else gone into reverse.
The second is 'how on earth does this square with a 9.5 per cent jump in the prices industry is paying for its fuel and raw materials?' The answer there is that industry has taken it on the nose.
Quite a few West Midland companies claim they are now passing a fair bit of these costs on to their customers, albeit after a time lag. Others are not. Overall, factory gate prices have risen only 2.6 per cent over the year. In other words, nearly seven per cent has been squeezed out of industry's margins.
We will discover whose margins and what they propose to do about it next month as industrial companies bring in their 2004 results.
The grand pattern, though, is clear enough. Cheap imports, not all of them Chinese, made cheaper still by the strength of the pound against the dollar and dollarlinked currencies, including China's, is pushing down the price of goods.
Meantime, earnings are rising by something close to the Bank of England's ' comfort zone' of 4.5 per cent. So the cost of services goes up by at least that.
We are back with the two-speed economy in a new guise. Last week Prof Stephen Nickell, one-time member of the Bank of England's interest-setting committee, argued that something will give, that this low inflation is doomed.
If Prof Nickell's former colleagues at the Bank are persuaded, interest rates will be heading up, not down - though not quite yet. It is a miserable prospect for industry, most notably in the West Midlands, where morale has dropped alarmingly, according to the CBI's quarterly trends survey.
We can hope only that the Professor is wrong, or no more than half-right. But Prime Minister Blair is not betting on it. He is nipping in with his General Election while the going is good.
