I like Christmas, but the period leading up to it is always one of high anxiety for me. It’s about shopping for presents. I hate it but I’m boringly Old School and still try to get appropriate gifts for people. I never learn.

In this, I take after my mother, who was collecting and immaculately wrapping presents from August onwards every year. It was awful for her in her last three years when, immobilised after a stroke, she was unable to potter round the shops as she had always done.

Sadly I’m not as organised as she was. I tend to leave it till well into December. This means I trail round a ram-packed Westfield desperately searching for something that might momentarily divert my niece’s daughter while wondering just how many previous times I have bought gloves for my sister-in-law. Nowadays, too, I am often to be found scouring websites at one in the morning with three days to go to The Big Day.

I usually end up buying everybody two or three things, working on the principle that at least one of them will please. I live in mortal fear of those insincere thankyous, which I’ve probably offered too many times myself.

We normally get it wrong. Brits return hundreds of thousands of gifts every year, the numbers accelerating now so many are ordered online. Trying to guess what people would really like is next to impossible, and asking them outright normally only produces non-committal answers.

Of course, any rational person would just email Amazon vouchers. It would save you the hassle and probably make the recipient happier.

There’s probably a public policy lesson in this. Politicians seem increasingly to want to give people things — free school lunches, cheap electricity, or free bus passes.  An outfit based at University College London wants to give people ‘universal basic services’, including free internet access, housing, and even food. They draw an analogy with the NHS and free state schooling, though some of us might argue that these examples don’t do as much for their case as they think.

But, just as unwrapping a scarf or a foot spa may not please everyone on Christmas morning, it seems unlikely that our governments would get it right except by chance. Most of us, whether keeping our income after tax or receiving pensions or state benefits, would prefer to buy things for ourselves rather than have choices made for us, however kindly.

Still, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this year Santa brings you something you like. Happy Christmas!

Bank of England needs to change tack on interest rates

The Office for National Statistics released new data this week finding that inflation fell lower-than-expected 3.9 per cent in November. The IEA’s Julian Jessop responded:

• The sharp fall in inflation in November makes the Bank of England’s position on interest rates look even shakier.

• Almost every leading indicator has been pointing firmly downwards for some time, notably the monetary aggregates, but some on the Monetary Policy Committee still want to raise rates further

• In reality, inflation is well on track to hit the MPC’s two per cent target in the first half of 2024, which would be at least a year earlier than the Bank has been forecasting. Deflation is now the bigger risk and interest rates are too high.

• Unfortunately, the Monetary Policy Committee has continued focus on hypothetical ‘second-round effects’ and ‘wage-price spirals’. But with pay pressures now easing too, the MPC will soon run out of reasons not to cut rates. The longer the Bank waits, the greater the risks that the economy is tipped into a recession that is wholly unnecessary to bring inflation down.”

At its last meeting in November, the IEA’s Shadow Monetary Policy Committee called for a cut in interest rates to avoid recession.

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