07 Jul During the pandemic Ellen Sampson, a British artist and curator, reassessed her relationships with the objects around her

The Bank of England meets on Thursday with inflation well above its 2% target. In April, prices rose at an annual rate of 9%. But that does not mean a large interest-rate increase is imminent. The bank's monetary policy committee is supposed to look beyond temporary shocks and consider the wider economic environment.

Recent data suggest there is no need to panic. Employee earnings do not yet point to a wage-price spiral. In the three months to April, pay excluding bonuses fell by 2.2%, after adjusting for inflation. If anything Britain's slow economy is more of a worry. In April GDP fell by 0.3% relative to the month before, with manufacturing hurt by soaring costs and supply-chain disruption. Increasing rates too quickly could depress growth and medium-term inflation too much. So although some at the bank may push for an increase in the official interest rate of 0.5 percentage points, most expect it to raise interest rates by just half that.

The great uprooting

Over 100m people have been forced from their homes by war and persecution, the first time that figure has hit the grim milestone. The number is just one of many depressing figures from the UN refugee agency's Global Trends report, which was published on Thursday. The report shows that the number of displaced people worldwide has risen in each of the past ten years, reaching 89.3m by the end of 2021-more than double the figure in 2001. Since last year things have worsened further, largely because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as well as fallout from the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan and civil war in Ethiopia.

Before Russia's invasion, most refugees came from Syria, Venezuela and Afghanistan. Those that fled abroad tended to go to low- and middle-income countries: Turkey, Uganda and Pakistan hosted the world's biggest refugee populations. But many more people are internally displaced: 53.2m worldwide.