In this, the information age, there’s no reason to have such poor metrics for inflation. Hell, there shouldn’t even be a “one size fits all” number for inflation. In fact, each and every company could report it’s own rate and I’d argue they should be obligated to. Tesco knows how much their prices have gone up and it’s a fairly trivial database query and some simple maths to report their rate of inflation for any window of time people may want to compare.
I went for a £3 meal deal on Friday..it was £3.50 put that on your list!
> The Smart Price, Basics and Value range products offered as lower-cost alternatives are stealthily being extinguished from the shelves, leaving shoppers with no choice but to “level up” to the supermarkets’ own branded goods – usually in smaller quantities at larger prices.
With even the average own-brand product going up 5-20p in recent weeks. I’m not buying anything fancy and stick to ~90% supermarket own-brand products however my food bill has gone up by a few quid since December. I’m lucky enough to be able to withstand that but it does mean buying only things I need from now and a small treat is no longer something I can justify if I want to keep the bill down. Other families are just having to cut out meals altogether, with some kids only getting a proper meal at school (who are then fucked during the holidays). We’re looking at a return to Victorian society when the government refuse to do anything to tackle the cost of living rise expected when the energy cap goes in a few months.
Worth noting that the added costs of brexit related trade will inevitably hit the cheapest items hardest.
Shipping costs are going to be based on volume/ weight of consignment, so 20p added to 500g of ‘premium pasta’ may raise the price by 10% (or even absorbed by the shop), but when 20p is added to the price of basics pasta, it may raise it by 50%. The costs of the goods themselves won’t have changed, but the poor are disproportionately fucked (as we already knew) by the increased distribution/admin charges which are equal for all products
Been noticing this loads in Tesco, maybe because we don’t have a huge one, but many Tesco “every day” products are no longer on their shelves, went to buy some brie today and had to buy President brand. They did have a normal Tesco brand at £1.60 but it is only 160g…
The President brand which is much nicer anyway, was £2 for 200g.
All the unhealthy food is cheap. Hello obesity for all, can’t remember what country its becoming like…A_____A
I currently work for the internet shopping department at a supermarket and for about 6 months now have really been noticing the price hikes in nearly everything week to week. Things that were 89p are now £1.30, things that were £4.39 (meat) are now £5.19. When every item in your trolley does that you quickly get people who can no longer afford it, and its not like they were living lavishly to start with.
Oh and when the item goes on sale, it just goes back to the old price, so you dont really save at all.
Friendly reminder of the age old maxim: If you see someone steal food, you didn’t see anything.
I’ve really been feeling this for the last couple of years, and thought I was going mad.
I’ve been cooking from scratch for the last 7 years or so, and my shops used to cost £60 for 2 people when I was just buying whatever I wanted, and it’s clocking in a lot more now, even though I’m being conscious of the pricing and trying not to have the pricier things I used.
I could cook a whole week of food from Aldi at £25 if I went there instead, and now they are clocking in at £40 or so, and that’s while watching my purchases. I’m glad someone has pointed this out and got some traction.
I could buy 2 frozen pizzas for each day at £1 each, and be fed, but cooking with basics like pasta, rice, broccoli, passata, chicken, it’s gone way WAY up.
Having access to migrant workers picking crops, having a nation where everything is close in, with an environment where we can easily grow stuff and have plenty of rain, and having exceptional trade deals with a whole continent on our doorstep has all meant that we’ve had food prices way lower than what some other nations pay for their food.
Now we’ve thrown the trade deals and migrant workers in the bin for no reason, we’re losing some of the extreme advantage we’ve all been enjoying without knowing about it, and the results are going to be brutal.
The mysupermarket website shut down last year too, making it harder to compare prices.
Yep. Unfettered capitalism is just as destructive a politic as unfettered [insert any other here].
She briefly mentions school uniform too – I checked the supplier for my youngest’s state secondary school and school uniform (1x jumper, 1x shirt, 1x skirt) and PE kit (1x shirt, 1x joggers, 1x socks) comes in at £102.70, plus £4.95 if I can’t personally get to the one shop in the city. That’s just one of each item, which will all need washing at least once during the school week unless I buy spares. For some people there is no ‘buying the cheapest school uniform that won’t fall apart in the wash’, you can’t buy a 3 pack of plain polos in Asda if the school requires a logoed shirt at £8.95 each. And that’s before the smart plain black shoes and trainers for PE, stationary etc.
Maybe it’s a good thing people are struggling to feed their kids, if you stunt their growth through malnutrition you won’t need to spend £200 minimum every school year replacing the bare basics.
“This time last year, the cheapest pasta in my local supermarket (one of the Big Four), was 29p for 500g. Today it’s 70p. That’s a 141% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households.
This time last year, the cheapest rice at the same supermarket was 45p for a kilogram bag. Today it’s £1 for 500g. That’s a 344% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households.
…
And just to add:
– an upmarket ready meal range was £7.50 ten years ago, and is still £7.50 today.
– a high-end stores ‘Dine In For Two For £10’ has been £10 for as long as I can remember.
– my local supermarket had 400+ items in their value range, it’s now 91 (and counting down)”
To return to the luxury ready meal example, if the price of that had risen at the same rate as the cheapest rice in the supermarket, that £7.50 lasagne would now cost £25.80.
Dine In For £10 would be £34.40.
We’re either all in this together, or we aren’t.
(Spoiler: we aren’t)”
I know the price differences between the tier of goods is different because of logistics, but it really did help illustrate how already struggling people are worse off.
Genuinely, anyone who thinks the “5%” increase is all it is is, unfortunately, detached from reality.
Glad this is picking up traction, it’s so completey beyond what is normal that I’m shocked people aren’t out in the streets protesting already tbh.
Of all the egregious things this Tory gov have gotten away with for 12 years, allowing this to happens is near the top of the list.
People have and will die because of this unfortunately.
Not just the poor either – I grew up poor but am now firmly middle class, but we’re watching our weekly shop increase with what was previously concern and is now verging on alarm.
We have some spare cash, we can absorb some hit – but with prices rising 9-10% (the official 5% inflation is clearly bullshit, even discounting the fact that a lot of it comes from hospitality/restaurants) and our pay rising 1-3% max, there’s only so much we can absorb before making significant changes to our lifestyle… and any “shock absorption” we do isn’t free, it still eats into our ability to save
I mean, I’d rather be in our position than on the poverty line, and certainly I wouldn’t count our plight in with theirs (“Oh no, we can’t have a holiday” is a fair distance away from “Food or heating this week?”) but it’s certainly not just affecting the poor
The poor people I know just steal food if they are hungry. The shop staff let them, too.
Nobody cares about big supermarket profits apart from those profiting.
The supermarkets have all been back to doing all the shitty pricing games she shamed ’em into stopping 20 years ago, right down to Tesco & Asda requiring multiple item purchases to get a ‘decent’ price.
It becomes even more problematic if you try and factor quality of product into this as well. Not all products of the same category are good quality especially the supermarket brands. It’s become very confusing to shop for food or compare the options.
I work at Tescos and over the last year all the price labels have changed and some items have gone up ridiculously
It’s an interesting article. It says that the RPI and CPI are used interchangeably, though and this is wrong. The RPI is defunct, retained for only historical reasons.
From what I can tell, if a – for example – value stock cube had been discontinued *and*it had been included in the basket this *would*show up as inflation
It would be interesting to see what the ONS says on this – they are pretty awesome in my opinion – and it may well be that CPI data could be used to construct this new index
lol. Mental gymnastics have been used for inflation for an age now.
An accurate measure of inflation in the UK would likely put us well into double digits (I think ~15%) but do you really expect the Government and Banks to tell the truth?
Plain and simple:
Money printing = inflation.
Inflation + not significantly raising interest rates = financial ruin
The almost 0% interest rates and non-stop currency creation since 2008 are the cause of this inflation we are seeing now. Especially all the free currency created and handed out in the last two years.
We are in the end game of this 50 year ponzi scheme.
Prepare yourself accordingly.
I’m sure the usual suspects will be along to whinge its all doom and gloom and everything is fine in the UK.
The way inflation is measured can also be misleading. The annual inflation figure usually quoted is the average inflation over the past 12 months, and is currently 5.1%.
But if you look at the 3 months from October to December, the CPI went up by 2.4%. If that continues, it will be 9.6% a year, not 5.1%. Rather like Covid deaths, big increases in inflation don’t show up immediately in the figures.
I’d argue the problem isnt the price of food, but low wages. By keeping food so cheap (yes, even now) we’ve distorted the market. Farmers are having to rely on dodgy labour no average brit would do to make sure they can stay afloat, this is because the Supermarket megacorps can just tell farmers demanding a fairer wage to eat shit and walk to a competitor, the reason they do this is because they’re in a perpetual cold-war with their rivals over whom can go as cheap as possible, all the while the average shopper has to struggle with their meagre wages.
Tldr: Food isn’t worth its true value because to do so makes it more expensive then the average man can afford so buisnesses take advantage of our poor wages
You get what you vote for. Peoples xenophobia influencing their Brexit vote and fear of a labour government who would have cared about poor peoples rights has brought this about. I remember thinking, now it’s going to be awful but it’s the only way they’ll learn. I earn enough to get by but the people who live in poor areas like Cornwall and Sunderland and Cumbria and Grimsby who voted for Brexit and for the Tories only have themselves to blame. It’s a real shame it has to play out for them in this way but they wanted it this way.
27 comments
In this, the information age, there’s no reason to have such poor metrics for inflation. Hell, there shouldn’t even be a “one size fits all” number for inflation. In fact, each and every company could report it’s own rate and I’d argue they should be obligated to. Tesco knows how much their prices have gone up and it’s a fairly trivial database query and some simple maths to report their rate of inflation for any window of time people may want to compare.
I went for a £3 meal deal on Friday..it was £3.50 put that on your list!
Jack really does a good job of getting across social issues like this, I really hope she gets some attention and traction. I really recommend [her blog post](https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2018/02/17/my-ready-meal-is-none-of-your-fucking-business/?amp=1) for anyone who’s curious on why poor food choices get made.
As an aside some of her recipes are really nice!
> The Smart Price, Basics and Value range products offered as lower-cost alternatives are stealthily being extinguished from the shelves, leaving shoppers with no choice but to “level up” to the supermarkets’ own branded goods – usually in smaller quantities at larger prices.
With even the average own-brand product going up 5-20p in recent weeks. I’m not buying anything fancy and stick to ~90% supermarket own-brand products however my food bill has gone up by a few quid since December. I’m lucky enough to be able to withstand that but it does mean buying only things I need from now and a small treat is no longer something I can justify if I want to keep the bill down. Other families are just having to cut out meals altogether, with some kids only getting a proper meal at school (who are then fucked during the holidays). We’re looking at a return to Victorian society when the government refuse to do anything to tackle the cost of living rise expected when the energy cap goes in a few months.
Worth noting that the added costs of brexit related trade will inevitably hit the cheapest items hardest.
Shipping costs are going to be based on volume/ weight of consignment, so 20p added to 500g of ‘premium pasta’ may raise the price by 10% (or even absorbed by the shop), but when 20p is added to the price of basics pasta, it may raise it by 50%. The costs of the goods themselves won’t have changed, but the poor are disproportionately fucked (as we already knew) by the increased distribution/admin charges which are equal for all products
Been noticing this loads in Tesco, maybe because we don’t have a huge one, but many Tesco “every day” products are no longer on their shelves, went to buy some brie today and had to buy President brand. They did have a normal Tesco brand at £1.60 but it is only 160g…
The President brand which is much nicer anyway, was £2 for 200g.
All the unhealthy food is cheap. Hello obesity for all, can’t remember what country its becoming like…A_____A
I currently work for the internet shopping department at a supermarket and for about 6 months now have really been noticing the price hikes in nearly everything week to week. Things that were 89p are now £1.30, things that were £4.39 (meat) are now £5.19. When every item in your trolley does that you quickly get people who can no longer afford it, and its not like they were living lavishly to start with.
Oh and when the item goes on sale, it just goes back to the old price, so you dont really save at all.
Friendly reminder of the age old maxim: If you see someone steal food, you didn’t see anything.
I’ve really been feeling this for the last couple of years, and thought I was going mad.
I’ve been cooking from scratch for the last 7 years or so, and my shops used to cost £60 for 2 people when I was just buying whatever I wanted, and it’s clocking in a lot more now, even though I’m being conscious of the pricing and trying not to have the pricier things I used.
I could cook a whole week of food from Aldi at £25 if I went there instead, and now they are clocking in at £40 or so, and that’s while watching my purchases. I’m glad someone has pointed this out and got some traction.
I could buy 2 frozen pizzas for each day at £1 each, and be fed, but cooking with basics like pasta, rice, broccoli, passata, chicken, it’s gone way WAY up.
We simply don’t realise how good we’ve had it in the UK. I did a [price breakdown of food](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/nz1a1v/request_what_would_the_price_difference_equate_to/h1o8dbt/) on another reddit post, and I was getting so many astounded messages from US redditors who couldn’t believe our food prices. Some of their food is four times the price of what we’d pay.
Having access to migrant workers picking crops, having a nation where everything is close in, with an environment where we can easily grow stuff and have plenty of rain, and having exceptional trade deals with a whole continent on our doorstep has all meant that we’ve had food prices way lower than what some other nations pay for their food.
Now we’ve thrown the trade deals and migrant workers in the bin for no reason, we’re losing some of the extreme advantage we’ve all been enjoying without knowing about it, and the results are going to be brutal.
The mysupermarket website shut down last year too, making it harder to compare prices.
Yep. Unfettered capitalism is just as destructive a politic as unfettered [insert any other here].
She briefly mentions school uniform too – I checked the supplier for my youngest’s state secondary school and school uniform (1x jumper, 1x shirt, 1x skirt) and PE kit (1x shirt, 1x joggers, 1x socks) comes in at £102.70, plus £4.95 if I can’t personally get to the one shop in the city. That’s just one of each item, which will all need washing at least once during the school week unless I buy spares. For some people there is no ‘buying the cheapest school uniform that won’t fall apart in the wash’, you can’t buy a 3 pack of plain polos in Asda if the school requires a logoed shirt at £8.95 each. And that’s before the smart plain black shoes and trainers for PE, stationary etc.
Maybe it’s a good thing people are struggling to feed their kids, if you stunt their growth through malnutrition you won’t need to spend £200 minimum every school year replacing the bare basics.
Her [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1483778776697909252?t=TQZaLWkcETgGhQj_LQ2TNw&s=19) the other day was eye-opening.
“This time last year, the cheapest pasta in my local supermarket (one of the Big Four), was 29p for 500g. Today it’s 70p. That’s a 141% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households.
This time last year, the cheapest rice at the same supermarket was 45p for a kilogram bag. Today it’s £1 for 500g. That’s a 344% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households.
…
And just to add:
– an upmarket ready meal range was £7.50 ten years ago, and is still £7.50 today.
– a high-end stores ‘Dine In For Two For £10’ has been £10 for as long as I can remember.
– my local supermarket had 400+ items in their value range, it’s now 91 (and counting down)”
To return to the luxury ready meal example, if the price of that had risen at the same rate as the cheapest rice in the supermarket, that £7.50 lasagne would now cost £25.80.
Dine In For £10 would be £34.40.
We’re either all in this together, or we aren’t.
(Spoiler: we aren’t)”
I know the price differences between the tier of goods is different because of logistics, but it really did help illustrate how already struggling people are worse off.
Genuinely, anyone who thinks the “5%” increase is all it is is, unfortunately, detached from reality.
Glad this is picking up traction, it’s so completey beyond what is normal that I’m shocked people aren’t out in the streets protesting already tbh.
Of all the egregious things this Tory gov have gotten away with for 12 years, allowing this to happens is near the top of the list.
People have and will die because of this unfortunately.
Not just the poor either – I grew up poor but am now firmly middle class, but we’re watching our weekly shop increase with what was previously concern and is now verging on alarm.
We have some spare cash, we can absorb some hit – but with prices rising 9-10% (the official 5% inflation is clearly bullshit, even discounting the fact that a lot of it comes from hospitality/restaurants) and our pay rising 1-3% max, there’s only so much we can absorb before making significant changes to our lifestyle… and any “shock absorption” we do isn’t free, it still eats into our ability to save
I mean, I’d rather be in our position than on the poverty line, and certainly I wouldn’t count our plight in with theirs (“Oh no, we can’t have a holiday” is a fair distance away from “Food or heating this week?”) but it’s certainly not just affecting the poor
The poor people I know just steal food if they are hungry. The shop staff let them, too.
Nobody cares about big supermarket profits apart from those profiting.
The supermarkets have all been back to doing all the shitty pricing games she shamed ’em into stopping 20 years ago, right down to Tesco & Asda requiring multiple item purchases to get a ‘decent’ price.
It becomes even more problematic if you try and factor quality of product into this as well. Not all products of the same category are good quality especially the supermarket brands. It’s become very confusing to shop for food or compare the options.
I work at Tescos and over the last year all the price labels have changed and some items have gone up ridiculously
It’s an interesting article. It says that the RPI and CPI are used interchangeably, though and this is wrong. The RPI is defunct, retained for only historical reasons.
You can see how the CPI is calculated and the basket of goods selected (sector 5) here https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/methodologies/consumerpricesindicestechnicalmanual2019
From what I can tell, if a – for example – value stock cube had been discontinued *and*it had been included in the basket this *would*show up as inflation
It would be interesting to see what the ONS says on this – they are pretty awesome in my opinion – and it may well be that CPI data could be used to construct this new index
lol. Mental gymnastics have been used for inflation for an age now.
An accurate measure of inflation in the UK would likely put us well into double digits (I think ~15%) but do you really expect the Government and Banks to tell the truth?
Plain and simple:
Money printing = inflation.
Inflation + not significantly raising interest rates = financial ruin
The almost 0% interest rates and non-stop currency creation since 2008 are the cause of this inflation we are seeing now. Especially all the free currency created and handed out in the last two years.
We are in the end game of this 50 year ponzi scheme.
Prepare yourself accordingly.
I’m sure the usual suspects will be along to whinge its all doom and gloom and everything is fine in the UK.
The way inflation is measured can also be misleading. The annual inflation figure usually quoted is the average inflation over the past 12 months, and is currently 5.1%.
But if you look at the 3 months from October to December, the CPI went up by 2.4%. If that continues, it will be 9.6% a year, not 5.1%. Rather like Covid deaths, big increases in inflation don’t show up immediately in the figures.
I’d argue the problem isnt the price of food, but low wages. By keeping food so cheap (yes, even now) we’ve distorted the market. Farmers are having to rely on dodgy labour no average brit would do to make sure they can stay afloat, this is because the Supermarket megacorps can just tell farmers demanding a fairer wage to eat shit and walk to a competitor, the reason they do this is because they’re in a perpetual cold-war with their rivals over whom can go as cheap as possible, all the while the average shopper has to struggle with their meagre wages.
Tldr: Food isn’t worth its true value because to do so makes it more expensive then the average man can afford so buisnesses take advantage of our poor wages
You get what you vote for. Peoples xenophobia influencing their Brexit vote and fear of a labour government who would have cared about poor peoples rights has brought this about. I remember thinking, now it’s going to be awful but it’s the only way they’ll learn. I earn enough to get by but the people who live in poor areas like Cornwall and Sunderland and Cumbria and Grimsby who voted for Brexit and for the Tories only have themselves to blame. It’s a real shame it has to play out for them in this way but they wanted it this way.