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

bbc.co.uk

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

#161

Post by bsnnkv »

blibble wrote: post #66
bsnnkv wrote: 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

I think as a Brit I'm still technically in the "We". ;)

What I have realized since living in the US is that every state is wildly different. Even regions within states are wildly different. Of course, I knew this before moving here, but it's a different thing entirely to experience it.

There are definitely big issues in US politics, at the federal level, at the state level and at the city/regional level. But if you don't like somewhere, you can move. I live in Seattle, for example, where a significant number of LGBTQ+ young adults move from all over the country.

The UK in comparison feels incredibly homogeneous, diversity of regional accents aside. London dominates the entire country both politically and economically. The impacts of poor governance at the country level are felt everywhere and cannot really be offset by regional authorities.

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

#162

Post by mike_hearn »

klelatti wrote: post #115

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…

This generic explanation for everything always gets posted to HN whenever the UK comes up in any capacity, but it isn't "fact based economics". Inflation is surging throughout Europe and the world. Trading Economics has a useful map that visualizes it:

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate

Inflation is high because governments printed enormous sums of money to fund lockdowns and furloughs. Helicopter drops of money creates inflation, it's as simple as that. This effect was predicted right at the start of lockdowns and now it's here. Moreover Brexit only actually took effect at the very start of 2020 so there was all of a few months to do anything before COVID hit and the government had no time to actually do much with its new powers.

Honestly, it's very tiring to see these kind of unsubstantiated comments so systematically rise to the top. If you want to prove something is causally linked to leaving the EU you need to prove it, not simply assert it and then declare anyone questioning that assertion is engaged in "denial".

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

#163

Post by HL33tibCe7 »

blibble wrote: post #66
bsnnkv wrote: 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

However much we like to laugh at them, the US is fundamentally in a much better position than us economically.

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

#164

Post by pessimizer »

rwmj wrote: post #19
mytailorisrich wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To compete after Brexit the UK needed to break with the status quo and that most likely meant, as many Brexiteers suggested, going for low tax low regs. Indeed, if the level of taxes and regulations in the UK is the same as in the EU then why setup a business in the UK rather than in the EU? We see that the current government is unwilling to go down that path, although Covid did throw a major spanner in the works of…

Any attempt to do that would be political suicide, as indeed Liz Truss recently demonstrated.

I think they put her out there to die, and that she knew it. When 80% of what she did gets redone by Sunak, it will be marketed as relatively humane and egalitarian.

It's like how everybody got to attack May as incompetent for the Brexit she proposed, which was obviously the only Brexit possible (i.e. as far as the EU was ever going to go.) They push her out, sneering, then go on to do exactly the same deal they pushed her out for. The UK public just needs scapegoats, and the UK political class serves them on a platter.

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

#165

Post by themihai »

ml_basics wrote: post #91
themihai wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that has always been part of the plan. The issue with EU was that the "immigrants" were acually citizens of the union which means the EU guaranteed them the same rights as british nationals. There was also the issue that some EU countries(i.e Italy) were giving italian/EU citizenship to fresh immigrants from Africa so that they can travel to the UK. For some reasons a big part of the UK didn't like that for o…

> There was also the issue that some EU countries(i.e Italy) were giving italian/EU citizenship to fresh immigrants from Africa so that they can travel to the UK. Source for this please? As far as I understood it is extremely difficult for such people to get Italian citizenship and had never heard of this as an issue

I can't find the exact article. For some reasons "everything" pre-brexit about immigration has been buried by Google. However the route of African migrants through Italy to the UK was well known before Brexit.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/uk-europe/news/african-migr...

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

#166

Post by racktash »

smhg wrote: post #139
racktash wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

> Do you mean something like Scotland going there own way?

Yes, exactly this – the four countries of the UK going their own way and the UK ceasing to be.

(It's my personal opinion – people will of course have their own take, and good reasons for having their views – that such a happening would be a devastating event.)

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

#167

Post by mike_hearn »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #144
ekianjo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has ambition? France has the only ambition to barely function as a country and not much else.

France has plenty of multinationals, produces research, startups, propagates culture, etc... Yes, by European standards France has tons of ambition.

By that definition so does the UK.

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

#168

Post by gw98 »

FpUser wrote: post #113
gw98 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you traded our bananas republic for a gun toting corporatocracy with low employment protection and comedy healthcare and no food standards. I'm not sure who's worse off.

Personally they might still be doing way better in the US and that is all that really matters.

For now. I know someone who was "doing waaay better in the US", took 3 weeks of leave and came back to a huge series of lay offs, market saturation, unemployment with no healthcare then his visa renewal was declined. So he had to spend his last wedge of cash getting back to the UK...

Took a position with 2/3 of the US salary but actual tangible security.

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

#169

Post by chrisseaton »

throw827474737 wrote: post #41
chrisseaton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has e.g. happened with the Horizon Europe research program which Switzerland is no longer part of. That’s so self-destructive - surely the EU needs Switzerland’s powerful universities more than Switzerland needs Horizon?

The other way round..

Don’t you think the Swiss out more into Horizon than they got out?

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

#170

Post by retrac98 »

bambataa wrote: post #79
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #3

I’m quite curious how this will end in the UK. Regardless of how much Brexit has to do with this, I think the lack of actual Brexit opportunities and the contribution it has to core inflation is at one point going to change the political landscape.

I’m very skeptical that Brexit’s negative consequences will ever be so unambiguous that people admit them. There will always be some non-Brexit excuse. Equally, remainers are too keen to blame everything on Brexit. Reading the UK personal finance subreddit is really sobering. Most people’s idea of a high salary (even in good industries) is less than a mediocre junior dev salary in the US. I feel extremely fortunate t…

It doesn’t erase the gap, but it’s worth mentioning the cost of living here is much lower than a lot of hubs in the US.

For example, I live less than an hour from London and my total monthly outgoings (including a mortgage) are less than £2,000.

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