It's controversial in the UK too. My colleague, Simon (who used to be the FT's stats editor), writes about it on our data blog: http://byline.timetric.com/2011

It's controversial in the UK too. My colleague, Simon (who used to be the FT's stats editor), writes about it on our data blog: http://byline.timetric.com/2011/02/14/uk-inflation-bad-decisions-from-misleading-figures/ http://byline.timetric.com/2011/02/14/uk-inflation-bad-decis... (which has subsequently been picked up by a couple of UK papers.)