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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

#261

Post by vladvasiliu »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #245
mike_hearn wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now compare to Germany. The difference is caused by France more heavily subsidizing/capping energy costs. It reflects a short term deviation in market policy triggered by gas shortages, not some fundamental divergence.

Exactly, that's specifically why I pointed out the issue of Germany's poor energy decisions. Germany is getting killed due to their decision to hook their wagon pretty much entirely to Russia for energy, and their inflation rate of 10.4% in October still was lower than the UK's. The UK is simply doing worse WRT inflation than any comparable country, and nobody, not even Conservative UK politicians, really debates thi…

How do you define a "comparable country"?

According to [0], the UK isn't doing that much worse than Germany (12.2 vs 12.6%). It's doing same as Norway and better than the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic and way better than Sweden. The latter being barely better than Ukraine, which is actually at war. Now I agree those are "smaller countries", so maybe not comparable?

Some "peripheral countries" are doing great (Romania), others terribly (Hungary). This is to say that values are over the place. I don't see any emerging trend that would allow easily to pinpoint the reason prices are going up in this or that country but not in the other.

The issue with Germany's decision, wrt to nuclear, is that it affects everybody because of the way electricity prices are set in the EU (priced for the most expensive production).

[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/consumer-price-ind...

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

#262

Post by Tiktaalik »

rayiner wrote: post #63
kergonath wrote: post #51

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.

Who didn't ship jobs and industrial capacity to china? USA did it. Canada did it.

They are not in the same place as the UK. I don't the UK did anything different than what was the liberal consensus of what to do at the time.

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

#263

Post by mike_hearn »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #245
mike_hearn wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now compare to Germany. The difference is caused by France more heavily subsidizing/capping energy costs. It reflects a short term deviation in market policy triggered by gas shortages, not some fundamental divergence.

Exactly, that's specifically why I pointed out the issue of Germany's poor energy decisions. Germany is getting killed due to their decision to hook their wagon pretty much entirely to Russia for energy, and their inflation rate of 10.4% in October still was lower than the UK's. The UK is simply doing worse WRT inflation than any comparable country, and nobody, not even Conservative UK politicians, really debates thi…

No, the UK is doing about the same. Look at the data:

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

Netherlands: 14.3%

UK: 11.1%

Germany: 10.4%

Euro area: 10.6%

Italy: 11.8%

etc.

"The UK is simply doing worse WRT inflation than any comparable country, and nobody, not even Conservative UK politicians, really debates this."

Nobody debates this because outside of the HN anti-UK bubble nobody is claiming it, and nobody is claiming it because it isn't true. This is what I mean by HN discussions about the UK being hot garbage for the last few years. Way too many posters are willing to simply make things up in order to attack the UK.

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

#264

Post by satysin »

tupac_speedrap wrote: post #213

Jesus, I think reddit is leaking. Lots of whiners in this thread, if you guys spoke French or German you would know the UK isn't that bad.

I’m not so sure of that. I am British but live in [redacted].

Pretty much all of my friends, family and old colleagues speak of problems in the UK while asking me if I am experiencing the same here.

Obviously [redacted] isn’t perfect but I haven’t had anything like my parents and sister have had with electricity price increases as just one example.

My worry is the UK will continue on a self-destructive path still.

This was my worry when I originally planned leaving the UK back in 2016 (moving to [redacted] in 2018) however I did not predict it would be quite this bad.

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

#265

Post by jmfldn »

mike_hearn wrote: post #259
jmfldn wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the OBR's own analysis of Brexit evidence enough for you? Even Jeremy Hunt has conceded Brexit is causing problems! https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-had-significant-adver...

Jeremy Hunt campaigned for Remain and then pushed for a second referendum when his side lost, so it's unclear why you think his anti-Brexit stance is worth remarking on. Are you thinking of someone else, perhaps? Re: OBR. We're talking about food price inflation. The article you cite in turn cites the OBR, but (a) contrary to what you're suggesting the OBR doesn't have seem to have done any of its own analysis and (b…

Why mention Jeremy Hunt? Just the small matter of him being the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the UK govt with a track record of good analysis.

Believe what you want at the end of the day. I would love to have to been proven wrong, but Brexit is an unmitigated disaster to almost every expert worth listening to.

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

#266

Post by jamiegreen »

alkonaut wrote: post #236
jamiegreen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and go where exactly....

Anywhere. The benefit of a decent education for all and fluently speaking a global language. The situation for any young Brit is much better than for most European peers who face the same question.

Ah anywhere, the land of milk and honey

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

#267

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #174

The UK is declining, and people are starting to notice it. People are blaming the government, and clamouring for more support and money, but unfortunately I suspect it’s not that simple. The elephant in the room, in my opinion, is that we simply don’t have the money to maintain the standard of living we once enjoyed. Almost all political conversations here are contingent on this fact, but this underlying problem is r…

What does UK produce? Finance, money laundering and real estate come to mind. All are in decline, for various reasons.

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

#268

Post by basicoperation »

Current top post on HN is a Raspberry Pi project: rpi is a British invention.

Second is a paper from UCL, based in London.

In the top few is a paper by DeepMind, also in London.

Yet HN likes to go absolutely nuts about how the UK is “done” at every opportunity.

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

#269

Post by mike_hearn »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #189
mike_hearn wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not particularly extraordinary because the UK's economy is dominated by services companies, and the EU single market never really made progress for services. They only developed and enforced a single ruleset for goods. Attempts were made from time to time to liberalize the market in services but usually failed because it would have benefited the UK at the cost of France/Germany, whereas for goods it was the other way around.

That's why exports to the EU haven't changed much (see my other comment). Imports did fall, but that the UK continues to import from elsewhere so it's unclear why people in Britain should care. The EU lost an export market, the UK didn't really (because the EU rules weren't benefiting that market in the first place).

This is the sort of thing I mean - there are a lot of people who very much want leaving the EU to be a disaster for long term ideological reasons. To determine whether it actually is or not requires a holistic analysis that goes well beyond economics, but at the moment even establishing basic economic facts like "inflation is not caused by Brexit" is apparently hard.

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

#270

Post by 00ajcr »

a_c wrote: post #181
Mikeb85 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Less ambitious than where?

I don't think UK people are inheritantly less ambitious than anywhere else, but the very low social mobility here has always dragged down potential for some, while the punishing austerity and lack of investment over the past decade has limited other people's opportunities further.

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