Is UK inflation becoming a worry?

[Mr Whippy]

Wills2 said:

Food inflation is the worry as that starts to eat into middle earners pay and starts to reduce the money available for the rest of the economy and it's rampant at the moment, there things I know won't buy like steak as it's too much and not worth it but there are man things you have to buy you can't avoid the rises.

I used to buy steak quite regularly in the late 2010s, but it's price seems to have rocketed.

OK, so has chicken, milk, butter etc. And as much as I like my steaks, it just doesn't seem worth it any more.

I'd really like to see the cost breakdowns to see why the price has risen so much for farm produce. It feels like someone in the chains is taking the pee.


Interestingly I was in my local butchers recently, their sausage rolls having now risen to a price where it's just not worth me buying them, so I chose a nice steak pie.
The owner wanted £2.85, vs the £2.45 for a sausage roll, he was thinking of upping the pies to £3.25 or something but he was just struggling to make the decision to do it.

I'm not sure where all these price pressures are coming from, but at this rate I'm just going to stop going there for anything like that, and just buy raw bulk meat.

I can't imagine everyone else out there is getting their 10% annual pay rises, and accepting that it's really a pay freeze (or cut when Rachel's had her extra taxes), and then not sitting at home realising how bleak it is and cutting spending in response.



I don't get how government can just say they're all about growth and the economy, and that it's early days and it'll take time, blah blah.

It's very clearly not working, won't work, and is utterly destroying small businesses, and causing rampant shrinkflation and enstification among later businesses products and services.



Maybe it'll all work out, somehow... but for it to do so, one way or another, a LOT of salary inflation (to catch back up at least, never mind pass inflation), or a LOT of price drops, will have to arrive.
We can't somehow have a booming economy unless people have lots of money.

I'm not seeing that on the horizon, I'm seeing stagnant wages and high inflation.

Or the likelihood of a GFC style event seems more likely than a booming economy with pay rises, to balance the position.

[borcy]

Must be someone on here in the food industry that knows about where these prices rises are coming from?

[Peterpetrole]

borcy said:

Must be someone on here in the food industry that knows about where these prices rises are coming from?

If that's a serious question -

Too hot lead to increased costs of water, lower yields, and input costs - fertiliser have only gone up every year.

[Hustle_]

Ukraine is a major provider of fertilisers and grain

[borcy]

Peterpetrole said:

borcy said:

Must be someone on here in the food industry that knows about where these prices rises are coming from?

If that's a serious question -

Too hot lead to increased costs of water, lower yields, and input costs - fertiliser have only gone up every year.

It was. There's so many people who work in different, always good to hear people from inside an industry explain things.

[malks222]

Peterpetrole said:

borcy said:

Must be someone on here in the food industry that knows about where these prices rises are coming from?

If that's a serious question -

Too hot lead to increased costs of water, lower yields, and input costs - fertiliser have only gone up every year.

minimum wage is now £12.21 (for over 21’s), thats £25k per year salary (based on a 40hr week). for an employer- add on employers NI, pension, sick pay, training etc…… and that costs a company £30k a year to employ someone.

if you take that back to a supermarket- to just cover the cost of a full time member of staff stacking shelves, they to sell a lot of cans of beans/ loafs of bread at a reasonable profit margin to cover that cost alone, plus they have rent/ utilities/ managers wages/ repairs to the store/ insurance (all of which keep going up and up in price)…….. then on top of that they also have to generate profit to keep the business/ shareholders happy!

now I’m not saying there isn’t profiteering going on, and i’m sure the businesses are still doing ok. But when the costs at every step of the chain are going up, meaning every step has to charge more, then costs are only gonna keep going one way!

[Jon39]

My earlier post was at the foot of the page, so quickly disappeared.
Hope that you don't mind me reposting.
Does anyone want to comment about the government debt situation ?

Mr Whippy said:

Perhaps a big mega bust is coming, ala 1929? ...

Who knows?

I do wonder whether the huge and increasing government debt, is eventually going to be the cause of big trouble for all of us.

If private citizens continually keet borrowing more and more, just to pay the minimum monthly credit card bill, we know how that ends.

The UK government is not alone having increasing debt, but in 2025-26 the grandly named Office for Budget Responsibilities said;
"We expect debt interest spending to total £111.2 billion. That would represent 8.3 per cent of total public spending.
Tax payers are obviously having to keep paying for this increasing amount of annual interest. Think what better ways this money could be used.


-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Mr Whippy said:

I don't get how government can just say they're all about growth and the economy, and that it's early days and it'll take time, blah blah.

It's very clearly not working, won't work, and is utterly destroying small businesses, and causing rampant shrinkflation and enstification among later businesses products and services.

I agree.

Most people must know that higher taxes and greater costs placed on businesses, are never going to be an incentive for them to invest more in their enterprises to create growth. More likely for them to reduce risk, scrap expension plans and think about cuttng their costs (redundancies).

We then consider the conclusion, that the repeated statements about economic growth, might be a smokescreen for a grand plan.
The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, both state they are members of the Fabian Society.
Take a look at the long-term aims of the Fabian Society. Could that be a clue about what is happening?

[Panamax]

Jon39 said:

Take a look at the long-term aims of the Fabian Society. Could that be a clue about what is happening?

What do you see as the problems with Fabian Society?

[Jon39]

Panamax said:

What do you see as the problems with Fabian Society?

Aspiration, drive and ambition all appear to be disapproved of.
Private activity, property rights and entrepreneurship should be discouraged.
Nationalisation of economic activity and high taxes.
Rationing and control of individual choices.
Equality of wealth.

Not me saying that. It is on the internet ( so must be true. )

I saw all that on a visit to Leningrad in the USSR days.
The people did not look happy.
Almost no traffic, but there were reserved lanes in the centre of the roads for use by government officials.
Think they might have missed the chapter about equality of wealth.

[Mr Whippy]

Jon39 said:

Panamax said:

What do you see as the problems with Fabian Society?

Aspiration, drive and ambition all appear to be disapproved of.
Private activity, property rights and entrepreneurship should be discouraged.
Nationalisation of economic activity and high taxes.
Rationing and control of individual choices.
Equality of wealth.

Not me saying that. It is on the internet ( so must be true. )

I saw all that on a visit to Leningrad in the USSR days.
The people did not look happy.
Almost no traffic, but there were reserved lanes in the centre of the roads for use by government officials.
Think they might have missed the chapter about equality of wealth.

Indeed, what's wrong with it? It's been tried lots and lots of times and it broke.

If I wake up tomorrow taxed to death and if I try get out of my lane and do something special or innovative, I either get hammered back into line or if it's a success, I get no personal gain from it, only society does...
Err, no thanks.

I get that's how Star Trek works, and if we had infinite food, energy, water, resources, and infinite space to spread out into, then fine... I'd spend my days being productive for my own satisfaction and for humanity... why not.

But that's NOT how it works is it. Those who don't want to work get taken behind the wood shed and shot in the head.

There aren't infinite resources, and those who don't want to work will be a waste of resource.


I'd suggest it's just utter cretinism at play. Politicians are just as likely to be utterly incompetent, as they are masters of manipulation and cunning.

Just as the prevailing vying wealthy powers are just as likely to be socialist fantasists, as they are capitalist fantasists.

In the middle is just a quagmire of political st.


And if they all just stopped arsing around and listened to their electorate then things would be a whole lot better.

[asfault]

The real scary thing is fuel costs are low,
Oil is below $70 a barrel and the £ is currently strong vs the dollar.

Either of these start going the wrong way watch our fuel costs go up and inflation really ramp up.

[Jon39]

asfault said:

The real scary thing is fuel costs are low,
Oil is below $70 a barrel and the £ is currently strong vs the dollar.

Either of these start going the wrong way, watch our fuel costs go up and inflation really ramp up.

Historically, $70 is not a low price for crude oil.

Fuel prices can be hedged fairly well.
Hold a couple of the oil majors, which have a continuous record of dividend payments.

When crude oil prices fall, our full costs will reduce.
If crude oil prices go high, we will pay more for our fuel, but at the same time having the satisfaction of the share prices increasing.

[Edible Roadkill]

Can we not sue the government for irresponsibility managing our money ?

Tax revenue after all is our money, not government money. There s no such thing as government money as they don t make it, we do, it s ours.

Seems to me they re foolishly giving it away and when they run out against better advice just borrowing more.

Maybe positions in senior government should be more like being a ceo or cfo in a company. fk it up and run I to the red and it s your house and own assets on the line. Perhaps then they would take matters more seriously!?

The older I get the more I think that guy fox was onto something

Edited by Edible Roadkill on Saturday 20th September 11:21

[bloomen]

Edible Roadkill said:

Perhaps then they would take matters more seriously!?

If the lack of respect for public money could be licked we'd be living in a utopia.

Same goes for the recipients as much as the ones who allocate it.