Its not that bad really, people are not being made poor by the credit crunch, just not having as much spare money in there pocket as they used to do, maybe !
Its true car fuel has risenn but in real terms motoring is still cheaper than it was 10 years ago , even taking in the cost of diesel.
Food has gone up, but it did go down every year for about 10 years.
Gas and electricity has gone up, but there are savings to be made by turning off unneccessery appliances and lights, fit low energy lightbulbs and get an high energy boiler fitted.
If you compare these rises against white goods you will see it helps to balance things out, my first washing machine cost me £500 20 years ago a video recorder roughly the same, also paid about £450 for a condensing tumble dryer only 3 years ago, now you can get the lot for less than £400 combined, well a dvd instead of a video.
In my opinion we've never had it so good