Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

grocerygazette.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

851–860 of 1001 posts

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#851

Post by dragonwriter »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #846
rhacker wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the basis for this feeling is that people keep moving here. We feel it when traffic gets worse, etc... Not really sure IF there's a real solution. The more people there are, the worse things get in small spaces. We have an entire country that is mostly empty.

California is mostly empty too. It's larger than Japan and has almost 3x fewer people.

Japan actually has about 3.25× California’s population. OTOH, California has a lot more land area that is, say, desert than Japan does, so there’s that (it also has a lot more that is controlled by a separate sovereign; 47.7% of California is federal land.)

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#852

Post by idleproc »

_Wintermute wrote: post #162
detaro wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... because it's a UK industry publication, writing about and for the UK?

I understand the publisher writing about it. I meant being singled out on HN, many US readers here seem to think this a uniquely UK issue.

Isn't the reason because the lingua franca of HN is English? If people were posting articles in other languages, there'd be a more representative set of criticism.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#853

Post by [deleted] »

ghusto wrote: post #525
kaanski wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general there seems to be a weird zeitgeist of negative exceptionalism in the UK at the moment. Not sure why but generally journos seem to write about issues like they are only hitting the UK when a simple google search shows they aren’t. It does come across like a weird concerted effort to paint the UK as collapsing since leaving the EU. The majority of journos seem to be able to write only negatively about UK cu…

> Not sure why ... Are you being facetious ;) It's because there are narratives to follow, sides to pick. There's no room for facts by themselves, they have to fit some story your pack has bought into. Right, left, middle, or anarchy, it's all the same; you're part of a herd.

[deleted]

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#854

Post by moffkalast »

kaanski wrote: post #198
_Wintermute wrote: post #87

For reference, that's a fairly average value for Europe at the moment. Not sure why the UK is being singled out. https://i.redd.it/8hbhiqhowjpa1.png

In general there seems to be a weird zeitgeist of negative exceptionalism in the UK at the moment. Not sure why but generally journos seem to write about issues like they are only hitting the UK when a simple google search shows they aren’t. It does come across like a weird concerted effort to paint the UK as collapsing since leaving the EU. The majority of journos seem to be able to write only negatively about UK cu…

It's not weird at all, negative news makes people angry and anger gets you the most clicks by a wide margin.

Most news sites have become rather terrible since they started optimizing solely for ad revenue.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#855

Post by 88913527 »

clnq wrote: post #60
illiarian wrote: post #29

Meanwhile in Sweden the CEO of ICA, the largest supermarket chain in the country (53% of the market) said yesterday: "It is actually the consumer who controls what they are prepared to pay for a product. In the end, it is they who decide." https://omni.se/icas-vd-det-ar-kunderna-som-avgor-matpriset/...

The consumer decides what they are prepared to pay for a product, unless the demand is inelastic. And for food overall, the demand is inelastic. Consumers cannot just say "food is too expensive for me, so I think I'm going to to go without it this month". They can choose between the individual products they buy, so it wouldn't be a problem if just some food items got expensive. But the price of food overall is inflat…

> Consumers cannot just say "food is too expensive for me, so I think I'm going to to go without it this month".

One could be temporarily elastic, e.g. thaw meats from the freezer, eat shelf-stable food from the pantry. And in a few weeks, prices could be different and they do tend to bounce around week to week.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#856

Post by mrkwse »

andy_ppp wrote: post #137

I cannot believe supermarkets these days, it is insane the increases in prices, I’ve seen £5 for a tube of normal toothpaste and £6 for a tiny Pizza that is sometimes available for £3. How people on modest salaries survive I don’t know. Quite often I’m starting to notice dark patterns in pricing where things you normally didn’t worry about will have randomly increased by £2-3 and you get the checkout and you’ve spent…

For me the actual dark pattern in pricing is when prices remain fixed but quantity/volume really reduces. It's subtle on the aisle, but if you use online shopping it's blatant when the product you usually order is no longer available and it suggests an item that is identical in terms of the product it is and price, but has a glaring reduction in weight.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#857

Post by lozenge »

varispeed wrote: post #671
andy_ppp wrote: post #137

I cannot believe supermarkets these days, it is insane the increases in prices, I’ve seen £5 for a tube of normal toothpaste and £6 for a tiny Pizza that is sometimes available for £3. How people on modest salaries survive I don’t know. Quite often I’m starting to notice dark patterns in pricing where things you normally didn’t worry about will have randomly increased by £2-3 and you get the checkout and you’ve spent…

Some supermarkets also have predatory practices to coerce people into using their data harvesting programs. Like you pay £1.5 for essential product if you scan a card otherwise it is £3. These should be made illegal.

It's not even about the data harvesting, it's because the £1.50 is a "promotional" price and that means they no longer need to display the unit price.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#858

Post by kumoflow »

manojlds wrote: post #622
andy_ppp wrote: post #137

I cannot believe supermarkets these days, it is insane the increases in prices, I’ve seen £5 for a tube of normal toothpaste and £6 for a tiny Pizza that is sometimes available for £3. How people on modest salaries survive I don’t know. Quite often I’m starting to notice dark patterns in pricing where things you normally didn’t worry about will have randomly increased by £2-3 and you get the checkout and you’ve spent…

Why is no one talking about Brexit in this whole equation? Yeah world is facing the brunt, but UK more so.

Because all of europe is in the same or worse place? No matter how much remainers want to blame brexit for everything, it isnt’t always the case. Central europe is around or a few points less than the um while easter and western europe are higher

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/11zwtif/annual_infl...

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#859

Post by mbar84 »

mrkwse wrote: post #856
andy_ppp wrote: post #137

I cannot believe supermarkets these days, it is insane the increases in prices, I’ve seen £5 for a tube of normal toothpaste and £6 for a tiny Pizza that is sometimes available for £3. How people on modest salaries survive I don’t know. Quite often I’m starting to notice dark patterns in pricing where things you normally didn’t worry about will have randomly increased by £2-3 and you get the checkout and you’ve spent…

For me the actual dark pattern in pricing is when prices remain fixed but quantity/volume really reduces. It's subtle on the aisle, but if you use online shopping it's blatant when the product you usually order is no longer available and it suggests an item that is identical in terms of the product it is and price, but has a glaring reduction in weight.

aka. "shrinkflation": Same price, less product.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#860

Post by [deleted] »

rhacker wrote: post #771
scoofy wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The negative moralizing of other people existing is genuinely out of control in California. From housing, to transportation, to climate change, to conservation, the major cities just causally like to pretend that if we can may other people go away, it'll solve our problems. It's thrown around causally like it's the state of nature, or an actual workable solution to anything.

I think the basis for this feeling is that people keep moving here. We feel it when traffic gets worse, etc... Not really sure IF there's a real solution. The more people there are, the worse things get in small spaces. We have an entire country that is mostly empty.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN