It should also provide a small amount of relief of to hard-pressed consumers.

The drop is thanks mainly to falling oil prices, which are expected to push inflation lower over the course of the year.

But the bigger worry remains the state of the global economy.

The bailout of the Eurozone's debt crisis continues to appear shaky.

Last week's downgrading by Standard & Poor's of nine nations including France was a bitter blow, whatever spin M Sarkozy tries to put on it.

Greece, meanwhile, edges inexorably towards default: its talks with banks on the size of "haircut" they will have to take on their colossal debt have failed.

Many European banks remain very weak. And the European crisis is starting to have a global impact: new figures show that Chinese growth slowed to an annualised rate of 8.9 per cent in the final quarter of 2011.

While that is still the kind of growth that Europe and America can only dream of, the slowdown highlights the globalised nature of today's international economy.

Given that China is for the moment the biggest driver of global growth, the hope is for a "soft landing" for the Chinese economy.

Against such a backdrop, the Chancellor can only hope that Europe somehow muddles through and that demand at home holds up.

A drop in inflation is good news in that respect, although with pay settlements running at around two per cent, consumers are still on average getting poorer.

This week forecasters have warned that the UK economy has slipped back into recession.

Even if it has not, let nobody be in any doubt - we have an incredibly tough year ahead.

Last week an unedifyingly-named organisation called the Commission on Assisted Dying, chaired by former Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer, urged new measures to make it easier for certain people to choose the moment of their departure.

The CAD sounds like an official, objective and independent body, but in truth is anything but.
It is funded by author Sir Terry Pratchett, an Alzheimer's sufferer, and businessman Bernard Lewis, both leading supporters of assisted suicide.

As for Lord Falconer, who picked its other ten members, he personally led an attempt to bring in an assisted dying Bill in the Lords three years ago.

So before the commission even began its deliberations, its conclusions were rather easy to predict.

Under its recommendations, a patient would be entitled to help in committing suicide if two GPs certified that he or she had less than a year to live.

In the same way as if you were taking out a loan from a credit company, there would then be a two-week 'cooling off' period, before the doctor prescribed the 'medication' - as the fatal poison is euphemistically termed.

But aren't doctors often wildly wrong about life expectancy? And why should a life be thought less sacred because it is expected to end naturally within a year?

Yes, there will be agonising cases in which the authorities should show mercy. But that is already enshrined in precedent law.

If assisting suicide is made legal, one real danger is that slowly but surely it will become routine.

The law is balanced and fair as it stands - we should be in no hurry to change it.

There has been mounting public anger in recent months over the surcharges imposed by a range of companies when paying by card.

The most notorious offenders have been some of the budget airlines (yes Ryanair, I do mean you) although the practice is now far more widespread than that.

Indeed even the DVLA surcharges those who choose to pay their car tax online with a credit card.

Under the new plans, from the end of next year it will be illegal for companies to charge in this way, and if they try to they will face enormous fines

For once the Government - admittedly with a prod from the EU - has got something right.

The credit card charges imposed by airlines and others have little basis in additional administrative costs or in the commission that they themselves pay to credit card companies.

They are just a way to squeeze more out of customers, pure and simple.

Nobody would put up with being charged extra for using a credit card in a restaurant: why should they do so when paying a plane fare or buying a cinema ticket?

And these charges effectively help stifle competition, since they make it difficult for consumers to compare the real, total cost of different goods or services.

The difficulty is that companies will doubtless find other ways of making up the shortfall in revenue, either absorbing such charges into headline prices or else relabelling them as booking fees and such like.

Consumer groups must be vigilant and this sharp practice must be exposed wherever it occurs.

The change in law can't come a moment too soon.

David Cameron wants us all to follow the values of the Bible, even though he admits himself he struggles with religious faith.

He says he is a "committed" Christian but only a "vaguely practising" one in the same sentence.

But no matter - he claims the "values and morals" of the Bible have made Britain what it is today.

Why do we put up with this sanctimonious tosh?

It reminds me of the Back to Basics campaign that John Major trotted out. Much good it did for him.

It's very easy for politicians to leap on the bandwagon of morality when their policies don't bear close scrutiny.

As so often with Cameron, he is trotting out this drivel because he thinks it will broadly resonate with voters - even though every single poll conducted in the UK in recent years suggests most of them don't believe in God.

The old saying goes that false patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Sorry. In my view, preaching phoney morality is more contemptible still.

I adore Frankie Boyle, because I share his disdain for exactly same people.

Celebrities and politicians are the least among us, with a handful of exceptions.

So what do we make of Jeremy Clarkson's bombast about shooting public sector strikers?

Clearly, it has whipped rather a lot of people into a lather of sanctimonious condescension.

Twenty thousand complaints and rising.

Suffice to say, these are not the sort of people I'd like to share a drink with.

They take offence by interpreting jokes literally, appointing themselves guardians of those who those who are lampooned, while all the time losing sight of one simple fact - these are just jokes.

I really do fear that if we give in to these sanctimonious idiots we will all end up as cowed zombies, afraid of speaking for fear of Orwellian repercussions.

Clarkson was exaggerating - a classic comedic technique - in a funny voice - another comic device - to make a point.

The point was that last week's public sector strike was entirely unjustified.

Even under the new offer from the Coalition, pensions of nurses, teachers and town hall staff will be many, many times better than those of people working in similar private sector jobs.

And the failure of public sector workers to accept that the rest of us have had enough of featherbedding their retirement is nothing short of a disgrace.

Yes, Clarkson's joke was in bad taste and offensive. But there is no law against bad taste and offensive jokes in this country and I pray there never will be.

I hope and pray he carries on being a thorn in the side of the prissy, pompous and pathetic for a long time.

Or maybe they should just be taken out and shot....

If the normally upbeat Topshop owner is gloomy, it's a certainty that many other UK shopkeepers are virtually suicidal.

The prospects for Arcadia, Sir Philip's company, are such that he intends to close up to 260 store branches when leases come up for renewal.

As Sir Philip says, "the consumer is spooked".

The November pay packet may have dropped in bank accounts this weekend - but we are loath to spend any of it.

So what will become of us all?

So much depends on how our relationship with the Eurozone pans out over the coming year. And that is enormously difficult to predict.

David Cameron's wants Britain to opt out of new regulations for the financial sector at the same time as wanting a say in how the 17 eurozone members run financial services.

Germany, predictably, is less than impressed with the PM's stance.

Britain is right to refuse to sign up to a tax on financial transactions but it is going to be hard to tell eurozone states to do the same.

It's obvious that we are better off outside the euro - but it will be difficult to insist that we have a veto over how the 17 run their affairs.

The question of the governance of the EU might seem a long way from Topshop closures, but it is not.

All British jobs and high streets are affected by the fate of the eurozone - whatever that may be.

We are truly living on a wing and a prayer.

With the third largest economy in the eurozone unable to pay its debts, the collapse of the Euro is now no longer a case of if, but when.

And the likelihood of a double-dip recession engulfing the entire continent is now odds-on.

Of course, it's easy to see where the blame lies. It rests squarely with the EU empire-builders, who devised the idiotic one-size-fits-all euro as a sneaky route to ever-closer political union.

It belongs too, to Merkel and Sarkozy, whose two years of dithering have allowed the debt crisis to develop into a full-blown catastrophe.

But let nobody believe that Britain can escape the consequences of our partners' self-delusion and gross incompetence.

For the new credit crunch is sure to devastate our hopes of growth, condemning Britain to yet more years of austerity.

With banks in Britain and across Europe heavily exposed to Italian debt that stands little chance of ever being repaid, the threat of contagion is chillingly real.

Only two things work in our favour.

The first is that we kept out of the euro, leaving our currency to find its own level while sparing us any obligation to bail out the failing economies of the eurozone.

The second is that the Coalition, for its many failings, DID take action to bring Labour's debts under control, meaning Britain has to pay only 2.2 per cent interest on its debt -- much less than other EU governments.

Whatever the Coalition does, it must sacrifice neither advantage.

And we must not contribute another penny to any IMF bailout of this vain, deluded folly.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard greeted The Queen with a smile and polite handshake when she landed on the first day of what is almost certainly her last ever tour Down Under.

But - cue collective apoplexy - that no-good, hatchet-faced Republican sewer rat failed to curtsey at the same time.

By the hysterical reaction to the perceived breach of protocol - (don't you just hate that word) - anybody would think Gillard had just spat in the old girl's face.

Worse than the saddoes with no lives who bombarded websites with their outrage, it created a platform for those appalling self-styled 'etiquette experts' who should have been taken out and shot around the time non-aristocrats got the vote.

One of them, a snooty sounding old Hyacinth called Jean Broke-Smith told the Evening Standard that Gillard was likely to be left with a "black mark" against her for the rest of her time in office.

She said: "Women should know better. That is a real no-no. You always have to curtsey to the Queen. Sometimes, obviously for a man, you get to do a little bob of acknowledgement.

"But when you are meeting the Queen, as she takes your hand you shouldn't look at her - you drop your eyes down and then you go down on a curtsey."

Have you ever heard such a load of old tosh?

What is this obsession with bowing and scraping in an modern, progressive nation in 2011?

Curtseying, a bizarre ritual which involves lowering the body in wilful subjugation, is an act of deference which has no place in an evolved democracy.

A bit like the anachronistic reference to British citizens as the Queen's 'subjects'

As the world faces financial meltdown haven't we really got more important things to get worked up about than the failure of a country's most senior politician to curtsey before a monarch who has spent a lifetime being pampered?

Three weeks ago he was riding high at the peak of his influence.

Good God, even Lady Thatcher chose to grace his 50th birthday with a public appearance, cementing his role as the darling of the traditional Tory right.

Fast forward to Friday, when a crestfallen Dr Fox was handing his letter of resignation to the Prime Minister after he 'mistakenly allowed the distinction between my personal interest and my government activities to become blurred'.

For those keen to defend him, consider this.

He allowed his non-security-cleared best man, the self-styled 'adviser' Adam Werritty, to attend dozens of Ministry of Defence meetings and official events at home and abroad in a period of little more than a year.

At least one of these meetings -- with a defence equipment supplier in Dubai, at which no MoD official was present -- was in clear breach of the ministerial code and in itself, a resigning matter.

The revelation that Mr Werritty's trips abroad were paid for by murky businessmen interested in securing lucrative defence contracts proved beyond doubt that Dr Fox was unfit to remain in charge of one of Whitehall's most sensitive departments.

Still he tried to cling on - and that is where the lasting damage was done.

He should have resigned as soon as his inappropriate relationship with Mr Werritty became public knowledge.

By clinging to office for so long, he stands accused of putting his own interests before those of his country and party in Government.

Such desperation diminished him both as a politician, and as a man.

And it makes any thought of a comeback, however far in the future, impossible to entertain.

Three weeks ago he was riding high at the peak of his influence.

Good God, even Lady Thatcher chose to grace his 50th birthday with a public appearance, cementing his role as the darling of the traditional Tory right.

Fast forward to Friday, when a crestfallen Dr Fox was handing his letter of resignation to the Prime Minister after he 'mistakenly allowed the distinction between my personal interest and my government activities to become blurred'.

For those keen to defend him, consider this.

He allowed his non-security-cleared best man, the self-styled 'adviser' Adam Werritty, to attend dozens of Ministry of Defence meetings and official events at home and abroad in a period of little more than a year.

At least one of these meetings -- with a defence equipment supplier in Dubai, at which no MoD official was present -- was in clear breach of the ministerial code and in itself, a resigning matter.

The revelation that Mr Werritty's trips abroad were paid for by murky businessmen interested in securing lucrative defence contracts proved beyond doubt that Dr Fox was unfit to remain in charge of one of Whitehall's most sensitive departments.

Still he tried to cling on - and that is where the lasting damage was done.

He should have resigned as soon as his inappropriate relationship with Mr Werritty became public knowledge.

By clinging to office for so long, he stands accused of putting his own interests before those of his country and party in Government.

Such desperation diminished him both as a politician, and as a man.

And it makes any thought of a comeback, however far in the future, impossible to entertain.

Three weeks ago he was riding high at the peak of his influence.

Good God, even Lady Thatcher chose to grace his 50th birthday with a public appearance, cementing his role as the darling of the traditional Tory right.

Fast forward to Friday, when a crestfallen Dr Fox was handing his letter of resignation to the Prime Minister after he 'mistakenly allowed the distinction between my personal interest and my government activities to become blurred'.

For those keen to defend him, consider this.

He allowed his non-security-cleared best man, the self-styled 'adviser' Adam Werritty, to attend dozens of Ministry of Defence meetings and official events at home and abroad in a period of little more than a year.

At least one of these meetings -- with a defence equipment supplier in Dubai, at which no MoD official was present -- was in clear breach of the ministerial code and in itself, a resigning matter.

The revelation that Mr Werritty's trips abroad were paid for by murky businessmen interested in securing lucrative defence contracts proved beyond doubt that Dr Fox was unfit to remain in charge of one of Whitehall's most sensitive departments.

Still he tried to cling on - and that is where the lasting damage was done.

He should have resigned as soon as his inappropriate relationship with Mr Werritty became public knowledge.

By clinging to office for so long, he stands accused of putting his own interests before those of his country and party in Government.

Such desperation diminished him both as a politician, and as a man.

And it makes any thought of a comeback, however far in the future, impossible to entertain.

Three weeks ago he was riding high at the peak of his influence.

Good God, even Lady Thatcher chose to grace his 50th birthday with a public appearance, cementing his role as the darling of the traditional Tory right.

Fast forward to Friday, when a crestfallen Dr Fox was handing his letter of resignation to the Prime Minister after he 'mistakenly allowed the distinction between my personal interest and my government activities to become blurred'.

For those keen to defend him, consider this.

He allowed his non-security-cleared best man, the self-styled 'adviser' Adam Werritty, to attend dozens of Ministry of Defence meetings and official events at home and abroad in a period of little more than a year.

At least one of these meetings -- with a defence equipment supplier in Dubai, at which no MoD official was present -- was in clear breach of the ministerial code and in itself, a resigning matter.

The revelation that Mr Werritty's trips abroad were paid for by murky businessmen interested in securing lucrative defence contracts proved beyond doubt that Dr Fox was unfit to remain in charge of one of Whitehall's most sensitive departments.

Still he tried to cling on - and that is where the lasting damage was done.

He should have resigned as soon as his inappropriate relationship with Mr Werritty became public knowledge.

By clinging to office for so long, he stands accused of putting his own interests before those of his country and party in Government.

Such desperation diminished him both as a politician, and as a man.

And it makes any thought of a comeback, however far in the future, impossible to entertain.

But I'll tell you this - hell will freeze over before Ed Miliband becomes Prime Minister of this country.

I know for a fact that many senior Tories - Cameron and Osborne among them - cracked open the champagne and could scarcely believe their luck when, like turkeys voting for Christmas, Labour chose Ed as its new leader ahead of his brother David last autumn.

Adenoidal, nerdy, the walking antithesis of voter-friendliness, it was a massively reckless leap of faith.

Now, a year on, with the economy in meltdown, he believes a little tinkering with tuition fees will be enough to convince people that he is putting flesh on the bones of his leadership and actually coming up with policies.

I've heard some damp squib leader's speeches, but this was the worst.

Bland, cliched, limp and repetitive, those of you who failed to see it because their TV screens blacked out can count themselves lucky.

Ed Miliband has the charisma of a soggy chip.

He has no policies, no connection with marginal voters who always hold the key to see-saw British elections, and none of the presence that people expect of a leader.

Labour is notoriously soft on ditching leaders who prove abject failures - remember Michael Foot?

But the party must tell Ed to shape up or ship out.

This weekend the Tories go into a conference buoyed by a level of public support they could have scarcely dreamed possible a few months ago.

And yes, wet Ed, it really is all your fault.

For all its multiplicity of failings I think our lives are on balance enhanced by our proximity to the rich cultural melting pot of nations like France, Germany and Italy.

But at the same time I'm never surprised at the Continent's barmier excesses.

And when I heard that civil servants were threatening to strike in protest at being asked to work a perfectly normal 40-hour week, I instinctively knew they would turn out to be based in Brussels.

The big row is over these poor wee souls being asked to take a baby step into the real world and increase their working hours a tiny amount from their current, cushy 37.5.

The Eurocrats -- who either do not work on Fridays, or go home at lunchtime -- say the move to a 40-hour week would have a 'very negative impact on reconciliation of working and home life.'

I spend much of my life at work trying to defend the positive aspects of working with our European friends.

Then along comes another reminder of how detached from reality some of these cosseted pen-pushers have become.

The fact is that they contribute very little to the real world.

Their absence from work may actually give the very British firms they are strangling in red tape a little breathing space.

So go on lads - fill your boots and go on your totally unjustified strike.

It's a sure bet nobody with a proper job will notice.