What are we supposed to do with our savings,Mr Brown ?

dunstonh

But we have inflation running at 7 times the base rate, thats surely abnormal even historically?!

You can look at any period and ask if its "normal". I doubt there is any such thing as normal. A general cycle maybe but each one is different. If you took a straight line over the long term as the average then you would find many periods above and below. Some more than others. There have been worse periods than this. It's probably more noticeable to some as we came off a period when savings rates were above inflation and they came down fast. Then we had no inflation and now it moved quickly up again.

This is what you get with savings. Its one of its risk factors. You either accept the risks or you diversify and spread the risks.