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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

#181

Post by a_c »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #73
racktash wrote: post #25

I genuinely fear for the UK. It's going to be a very different country in ten years, and I fear it will be a weaker, poorer and more divided one. I don't know for sure what the main cause of our current problems is, but 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. My hope for the country rests in the fact that it still has…

No you're right, the UK is done. Little to no industry left, they were a nation of bankers and multinationals that exploited their former colonies. But it's not because of Brexit, COVID or Russia. It's because they never adapted and the rich in their country cared more about maintaining status than improving the country. Look at France and Germany: industry, tech, lots of "producing" businesses thrive. Paris has even…

I'm new to the UK. The sentiment I get is people here in UK are generally less ambitious?

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

#182

Post by DrBazza »

jl6 wrote: post #53

The UK government is pulling financial levers as if this is a financial problem. But while there are several contributing factors, this is overwhelmingly an energy problem. The UK is 20 years behind where it needs to be in terms of nuclear, renewable and storage capacity. There is no silver bullet. It’s going to take 20 years to resolve, and that’s assuming they start today with an Apollo-program-level investment in…

This is a point that seems to be completely missed.

This is cost push inflation, but the UK government is trying to use the usual tactics to control it - tax and interest rates.

To be fair, it's what current economic theory prescribes for inflation, either cost push or demand pull. Tax and interest rates certain work for demand pull inflation. Cost push though? Everyone gets poorer, lower standard of living (whatever that mean...), but the government can be happy it has some part of inflation under control.

Even if the UK had more energy generation, just the existence of an international energy market means public UK companies would buy and sell that energy on that market and I doubt we'd be much better off.

The UK, and all of the West to be fair, is in the middle of "weak men, hard times" part of the cycle. It's no surprise that Putin invaded Ukraine when he did.

One final thing I'd add is that it feels to me as if the Government has been influenced by the mainstream media, and even social media, far, far, too much over the last decade or so.

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

#183

Post by mike_hearn »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #140
vladvasiliu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To what degree are they worse than the EU's?

You're making a very slippery argument here. You started by asserting that things are worse in the UK than elsewhere in Europe and this is due to Brexit, but you didn't name any specific way in which things are worse. So you were called out on it because this discussion is about a single data point - food price inflation - which is not different to elsewhere. Now you're saying well no, but if things were worse then it'd be the fault of Brexit.

HN discussions on anything UK related seem to always be like this nowadays. Intellectual curiousity is dead, killed by motivated reasoning. "Things are worse, I won't say what, but if anything is worse, then it's clearly Brexit and not anything else". That's not a valid argument, it's not even an attempt to lay the groundwork for an argument. We get it - you wish no country ever left the EU - but if you want to blame leaving then you need to show a causal relation, not simply assert that the EU can only ever make things better in any conceivable capacity.

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

#184

Post by ellen364 »

blibble wrote: post #55
squidbeak wrote: post #16

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)

I think it partly depends on what you buy. I haven’t seen it much. E.g. sometimes there are few eggs, which I guess is due to the bird flu situation. And sometimes I can’t find generic ibuprofen. Minor stuff. But some people I know have things they used to buy weekly and now sometimes can’t find for weeks at a time.

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

#185

Post by alephxyz »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #159
etiennemarcel wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What colonies are you referring too? The last one was Djibouti in 77...

> What colonies are you referring too? The last one was Djibouti in 77... Monetary exploitation is the most effective means of bondage and most widely accepted form to exert control over a population because it is required for any transaction that doesn't get solely resolved by violence, in doing so you can essentially tax, govern, and structure Society without the need or expense of an occupying presence just the oc…

Aren't states free to adopt or drop the CFA franc? How does that make them colonies?

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

#186

Post by cjbgkagh »

stavros wrote: post #150
jamiegreen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and go where exactly....

I feel bad for people who voted against Brexit. Now they have nowhere to go, even if they do want to leave.

Some countries in Europe still have pretty easy to get work/business visas.

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

#187

Post by rayiner »

Macha wrote: post #89
rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't the de-industrialisation of the UK normally attributed to Thatcher?

I think Thatcherism was the start of it, like Reaganism in the US. But it reached a peak during Labour.

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

#188

Post by rcarr »

stavros wrote: post #150
jamiegreen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and go where exactly....

I feel bad for people who voted against Brexit. Now they have nowhere to go, even if they do want to leave.

There's Ireland if you can afford it. I'm seriously considering it.

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

#189

Post by VBprogrammer »

mike_hearn wrote: post #162
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. Helicopt…

There is no reasonable way of proving casually in a world where we have been subjected to a permicrisis, some of it outside of our control, for the last 7 years. You can't easily separate one element of a multidimensional puzzle which is the state of a whole counties economy.

However, the idea that leaving the biggest trading block in the planet in exchange for a couple of piss poor (by the admission of those people who negotiated them) trade deals with small economies on the other side of the world hasn't damaged our economy is the more extraordinary claim.

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

#190

Post by bitL »

racktash wrote: post #25

I genuinely fear for the UK. It's going to be a very different country in ten years, and I fear it will be a weaker, poorer and more divided one. I don't know for sure what the main cause of our current problems is, but 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. My hope for the country rests in the fact that it still has…

Not just UK, the whole EU is basically flat since 2008 whereas US, China and India are growing like crazy.
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