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UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

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Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#131
post #95
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proposed Scottish independence is 12 months away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_second_Scottish_indep... > In July 2022, the Scottish Greens announced that, if a referendum were blocked, they would fight the next general election as a referendum instead General elections are 25 months away. Labour is up 30 points in the polls or something like that. Brexit probably didn't help the UK economy but the economic…

> Proposed Scottish independence is 12 months away. the SNP have been saying this since the first vote in 2014

A broken clock is right twice a day and all that. But the key point is 'if a referendum were blocked, they would fight the next general election as a referendum instead'.

If an actual referendum was allowed and held today it would perhaps be a toss up. But two harsh winters from now if the economy is still spiraling it will be a foregone conclusion.

Point being why would anyone invest in Scotland or the rest of the UK during such tumultuous times? And this political instability is set to continue for years and years now.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#132
post #66
post #30

I left the UK for the US in 2019. My I-485 was approved this week. I haven't been able to travel back to the UK since 2019 first because of Covid and then because of the pending I-485 petition. I'll be going back for the first time once my card is delivered. Reading about what has been happening over the past years in the UK while sitting in the US is really strange. Sometimes it feels like reading about a cartoonish…

> Reading about what has been happening over the past years in the UK while sitting in the US is really strange. Sometimes it feels like reading about a cartoonish banana republic in a novel aimed at young teenagers. that's funny as that's exactly what we think about the US (especially its political system) this was particularly terrifying to watch: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-63417249

The preview on that video has Dr. Oz with a shotgun. Dr. Oz lost.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#133
post #125

It might not seem like the biggest issue at the moment but the departure from fact based economics seems to me to underly lots of UK’s current issues. One example. They have to find Brexit benefits so we have pointless plans to depart from eu rules. Result is higher costs for businesses and uncertainty for anyone trying to plan. This allowed someone like Truss to get into power with a fantasy economic plan. You can w…

“Getting Brexit Done”, a terrible, debilitating disease. One of the worst symptoms has been “trade agreements at any cost” https://davidallengreen.com/2022/11/getting-any-quick-intern... “ All you have to do is turn up to the negotiation, ask what the other side’s negotiators want, give it to them, and – Hey Peston! – the United Kingdom has a trade agreement.”

Which is the opposite of what Brexit proponents claimed.

They claimed the UK was so essential that it could dictate its own terms with both the EU and other trade partners.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#134

It’s worth noting that for a long time, food prices in the UK have been significantly lower than in comparable countries in Europe. I go to France and Germany quite regularly, and to do a supermarket shop in either is significantly more expensive. My wife and I do online shops at Waitrose (which is probably the most expensive supermarket) and at a local butchers and don’t particularly try and save money on food. We s…

Farming is another industry where almost everything can be securitized.

A dairy farm may own or rent the acreage for growing its feed and related equipment or may buy it on the spot or futures market. May own, mortgage or rent its milking equipment.

Every country’s subsidies work differently, and it’s a bit opaque since everyone claims they’re hardworking and don’t get/need subsidies, but sometimes they’re even securitized and bought/sold.

So as each farmer makes its own bets/hedges, there are winners and losers when interest rates go up or down, feed goes up or down, land value goes up or down.

So the story of the “farmers going bankrupt, we need more subsidies” will never end.

In Canada, becoming a new dairy farmer requires you to buy $$$ “quota” from an existing farmer. Possibly they grow organically as demand grows too.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#135
post #34
post #30

I left the UK for the US in 2019. My I-485 was approved this week. I haven't been able to travel back to the UK since 2019 first because of Covid and then because of the pending I-485 petition. I'll be going back for the first time once my card is delivered. Reading about what has been happening over the past years in the UK while sitting in the US is really strange. Sometimes it feels like reading about a cartoonish…

Not sure everyone here speaks UK form numbers. An I-what?

It's a green card.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#136
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How full are supermarket shelves in the US? Whole product lines are missing in supermarkets in the UK.

> Whole product lines are missing in supermarkets in the UK. where does this rumour keep coming from? bar during covid I haven't observed this in any supermarket (unless you go at 9pm on a Saturday night or something, where they haven't restocked yet)

Likewise: full shelves at Morrisons, a large Tesco and a city centre large Marks & Spencers as checked visually in the last few days in a city of 1 million.

Prices are rising for some lines though.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#137
post #95
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proposed Scottish independence is 12 months away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_second_Scottish_indep... > In July 2022, the Scottish Greens announced that, if a referendum were blocked, they would fight the next general election as a referendum instead General elections are 25 months away. Labour is up 30 points in the polls or something like that. Brexit probably didn't help the UK economy but the economic…

> Proposed Scottish independence is 12 months away. the SNP have been saying this since the first vote in 2014

Which wasn’t that far from succeeding, at 44%. Since then, they were made to leave the EU, the Queen died, and the party that proposed it has done well electorally.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#138
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be ok in the long term. It has the resources to overcome its current issues (most of them self-inflicted). However, the next decade or two might be quite difficult. To be fair, there is some justice in it. You (collectively, as a country, not you personally) cannot keep voting for the same failed ideologies and then complain when the consequences come. This needs to be the end of Toryism as it currently exist…

Blaming “Toryism” is pretty odd. You think the economic problems affecting the UK started in the last decade? To me this seems to be the product of Blair-era Labour, which gutted the country by shipping jobs and industrial capacity to Eastern Europe and China. Populist nationalism is rising throughout the western world. It’s a reaction to the failings of globalist liberalism, not the cause of those problems.

> Blaming “Toryism” is pretty odd. You think the economic problems affecting the UK started in the last decade?

They came to power 12 years ago when interest rates were They have sold profitable state assets like the green investment bank, and essential security like gas storage.

The office for fiscal responsebility has calculated that these cuts have cost us hundreds of billions in the current energy crisis.

It has also been the most law-breaking government in living memory - they illegally deported thousands of british citizens in the Windrush scandal, had party in the middle of lockdown at number 10, to the PPE/covid eqipment contract handed out without tender to friends and family, Lordship titles for friends and dobors, breaking laws on political campaigns finance in Brexit referendum and taking godgy russian donations.

Combine that with the fact that they recently proposed a law to ankle tag 'repeat protestors' without a court process or any evidence of a crime.

I genuinely fear that UK is becoming like Russia or the inside, but with better marketing.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#139
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know that it's not a single issue. Brexit, Covid-19 and the war with Russia – not one of these issues alone is the cause of our problems. Only one of these issue is UK specific tho; so either your fears extend to the rest of Europe and/or the western world, or you can pinpoint the cause of your anxiety.

I think the handling of Covid-19 (and there plenty of varied , legitimate criticisms to be made about that ) is definitely a UK-specific issue. Not that the mistakes made by the UK weren't also made by other governments, of course. As for fears for the rest of Europe – I don't doubt that the rest of Europe has problems. My worries are confined to the UK because that's where I live. (To be clear, this isn't me saying…

> I think the country could very well cease to exist

Do you mean something like Scotland going their own way? Or something more dramatic (think revolution)?

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. All of Europe, and the world really, has had to deal with the pain (both economic and in lives) of Covid and the war in Ukraine. But the severity of UK's problems are solely of their own making and are pretty much entirely due to Brexit, and the fallout from Brexit that caused by a string of ill-prepared "leaders". That said, one reason I'm hopeful about the UK is that, compared to US politics, there is much…

I'm not familiar with the details of UK's issues, but I doubt that the subject at hand, food price inflation, can really be put on the back of Brexit. Pretty much all the Euro Area (of which the UK was not a part of) sees similar numbers. According to [0], it was at 15.5% in October, from 13.3 in September. https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/food-inflation

To be clear, I wholeheartedly agree. I just want to emphasize that, to the degree that UK's overall problems are worse that the EU's, Brexit is largely to blame. And this is taking into account some pretty boneheaded things that EU countries did, like Germany deciding to phase out nuclear in 2011.
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