Inflation ahoy!

[Rave]

The MPC cut interest rates to 5.5% today....despite the (IMO false) CPI measure of inflation remaining at 2.1%, I.E. slightly above their target.

Personally, looking at my own measure of inflation, all the foods that I buy, like potatoes, meat, marge/butter, flour, eggs, vegetables etc. etc. have increased by 20-50% in the last year. Petrol and diesel are up 15-20%. I feel like a bloody idiot for voting for a 4.6% pay increase now.

If your staple diet is LCD TVs, MP3 players, and clothes from Primark, then it looks like you're O.K. If you like eating food though, then prepare for your spending power to be drastically eroded. Looks like inflation is here to stay.

I might pop down to Lidl tomorrow and buy a couple of hundred quid's worth of tinned food.

[Theo]

The Scotch Broth is quite nice

[Stewart]

Prefer the Beef Broth myself. Heinz that is. I wouldn't shop at Lidl, I might be working class, but I'm not a pikey.

[kickstart 1]

You would be better looking for BOGOF's

[kalniel]

You would be better looking for BOGOF's

Yeah, they're worth even more with inflation

Inflation's good, means house prices aren't really as ridiculous as they look

[TheAnimus]

Inflation's good, means house prices aren't really as ridiculous as they look

And good because that way everyone can give more money to Gordon Brown, which he desperately needs to pay for wars, PPP schemes, and giving contracts to Accenture and the like (who on a completely un-releated matter donated quite a few hundread thousand as usual to the political campagine..... no correlation of course).

But without lots of inflation we might not all be paying 40% income tax. What a shame that would be.

[redlight]

Ching Ching thats Asda price
Inflation or
Stores admit dairy price-fixing | UK Latest | Guardian Unlimited
Gordon Brown its all your fault

[Lucio]

Unfortunately Rave's right on this one, everyday items have inflated by a long way. Just comparing my typical shop in Tesco from the start of the year to my most recent one shows a jump from £80 to £100 and we tend to purchase similar shopping each time...

I think the worst part of all of this is that this hike in the cost of basic goods has been combined with low interest rate credit and a highly competative luxury goods market means that it's never been more tempting to get yourself into debt for those one off purchases.

[Gerrard]

There's the other factors as well that have affected food prices as well. Those floods have had knock-on repercussions such as animal feed going up, in turn putting up meat prices. As fuel has gone up, so has the cost of moving all this food around. Whilst this doesn't account for all of the price increases, I do think that it has skewed the numbers a bit.

P.S. I know nothing and this is just my opinion; so feel free to say it's all bullpoop!

[menthel]

Has the price on tin foil incresed too?

[Kumagoro]

Well house price wise I think it wont make a difference the slide is happening already
and was happening before northern rock. The scaremongering has done the trick
and people are more cautious. Even at 5.75% the interest is very low looking back
over the past 30 years. I cant see people suddenly thinking it will be ok even if they drop it to 5%. The media have hopefully scared the people enough for it to keep
falling.

[mcmiller]

There's the other factors as well that have affected food prices as well. Those floods have had knock-on repercussions such as animal feed going up, in turn putting up meat prices. As fuel has gone up, so has the cost of moving all this food around. Whilst this doesn't account for all of the price increases, I do think that it has skewed the numbers a bit.

P.S. I know nothing and this is just my opinion; so feel free to say it's all bullpoop!

actually they are the reasons that food prices have gone up apart from the flood part which is bullpoop, the reason animal feed has gone up is because alot of it gets turned into bio-fuel strangely enough

[finlay666]

I'm fairly ok, get most of my food from my gf's staff shop where she gets stuff like ready meals for pennies as it's nearly out of date (as in goes that day or the next) and I just freeze it.

My last proper weekly shop that she got me cost me under £5

[JPreston]

I'm an Aldi man myself. Check the website, their weekly specials are often awesome, I've got a 1500x microscope and a wi-fi media streamer/radio in recent weeks. Plus they are excellent for food, proper continental stuff it is.

To those seriously claiming ~20% price inflation at Tesco (other supermarkets are available), that is flat out fiction, if that were even close to being true we would have slumped into some kind of feudal economy based on the barter system by now.

I still have almost no understanding of economics but I like the idea of inflation as opposed to a house-price fall. If the my house is over-priced and must fall in real terms, then I'd rather it held it's nominal value and sterling itself dropped, because that way Rave's rent goes up and the value of his deposit falls alongside it

[Whalefish]

Don't panic, just make sure you go out to the shops and buy lots of carp for xmas and get into debt, everything will be fine.

[mcmiller]

To those seriously claiming ~20% price inflation at Tesco (other supermarkets are available), that is flat out fiction, if that were even close to being true we would have slumped into some kind of feudal economy based on the barter system by now.

actually your wrong, i work in a purchasing department and work alongside buyers and alot of the companys are asking for a 10-20% price increase on their products and the buyers are excepting them, the company isnt but thats a different matter, obviously not all of that is past onto the consumer