Inflation

[Mito Man]

So the official figure was 2.1% for the last 12 months up to May. And probably more like 3-4% for the rest of the year. Anyone else finding this just a little bit conservative?

Apart from food and general household good seems like everything costs way more. Actually I think even most food costs more.
Seems like building materials have increased the most but everyone’s busy building anyone so no one minds?

[Jobbo]

Some things have not gone up at all. Not sure what you’re buying.

[Broccers]

Some things have not gone up at all. Not sure what you’re buying.

Agreeing with Brexit? Shut the front door.

[duncs500]

I think you've got a case there to get the old man to increase your allowance Mito.

[Jobbo]

Some things have not gone up at all. Not sure what you’re buying.

Agreeing with Brexit? Shut the front door.

Massive leap of logic there, Broccers. Some things clearly have gone up; building materials for instance. House prices too. But most people don’t buy those every day.

[ZedLeg]

I think it’s hard to say what’s affected price rises recently with the cascading shit show of the last few years.

I had a meeting to discuss how to deal with the fact that the costs of shipping containers to our sites has more than doubled over the last year. This is China to UK, EU and US so it’s obviously more than just brexit.

The amount of extra paperwork and cost involved in shipping in or out of the UK hasn’t helped though.

[Mito Man]

Shipping container firms made a greater profit in Q1 this year than the whole of 2020. It’s their greatest year ever despite shipping the same tonnage as some previous quarters.
Good gap in the market for someone to make an EasyJet style shipping company as they’re just going to continue this for as long as possible.

[ZedLeg]

I don’t think we’d pay for a cheaper service if we had to do more of the work ourselves tbh .

Part of what we pay for is someone else to deal with all the ballache paperwork and scheduling.

We send them money and the containers magically appear at our front door.

[Simon]

To be fair building materials are expensive everywhere, not just the UK. Multiple factors at play - people building more space at home, lack of supply because of pandemic, etc etc etc.

[Mito Man]

I don’t think we’d pay for a cheaper service if we had to do more of the work ourselves tbh .

Part of what we pay for is someone else to deal with all the ballache paperwork and scheduling.

We send them money and the containers magically appear at our front door.

This isn’t just a brexit paperwork issue when everyone else in the rest of Europe is also paying 5 times more for a shipping container. There’s some blatant piss taking going on amongst the freight firms.

[Nefarious]

Big inflation is in the post, it's just taking a while to work through the system.

The government have borrowed heavily to pay their way through the pandemic, and that money needs paying back. They can't raise taxes (coz they're tories) and they can't cut government expenditure (coz we're already at rock bottom due to austerity). So the only option is to inflate the debt away. So it's very fortunate for Boris and his chums that quantitative easing has become ideologically acceptable post credit-crunch. The combination of tiny interest rates and the government freely printing new money will make sure that inflation will run rampant. And when the time comes the economists will say it's necessary pain to keep unemployment down (which has an element of truth to it), but really it'll be a deliberate strategy to clear the debts.

Brexit is having an effect too, but the effect of increased costs, transport etc is a one-time shift and, in the real scale of things, relatively minor. A far bigger effect is the political pressure it creates to keep interest rates at rock bottom. They're painted themselves into a corner - brexit is a general kick in the nuts for UK exporters, and if interest rates go up, the value of the pound goes up, and UK exports are even less competitive. And they need to keep UK exports healthy to maintain the lie that Brexit isn't a complete clusterfuck. Which, as well as the fact that increasing interest rates will make government debt even more expensive to service, means that interest rates will be very low for the foreseeable.

[ZedLeg]

I’ve mentioned it before but we ended up setting up a new facility in Germany in April because Brexit was having such an adverse effect on us.

I did a shipping review for the UK recently and domestic shipping has moved from around 60% of the total volume to just over 90%. Luckily the absurd growth the company seems to be able to maintain means we’ve not actually lost anything but it was pretty interesting to see (for me ).

[Broccers]

Some things have not gone up at all. Not sure what you’re buying.

Agreeing with Brexit? Shut the front door.

Massive leap of logic there, Broccers. Some things clearly have gone up; building materials for instance. House prices too. But most people don’t buy those every day.

You're now contradicting yourself to fit the narrative. Probably a daily occurrence.

It'a about time we had interest rates at a realistic level. I'm all for inflationm

[Pete_]

At my local Tesco the price of my breakfast cereal has recently risen from £1.60 to £1.90.

[Marv]

Rear Michelin Anakee Wild tyre my trail bike was about £75 a few months ago, just over £90 now.

[Jobbo]

Agreeing with Brexit? Shut the front door.

Massive leap of logic there, Broccers. Some things clearly have gone up; building materials for instance. House prices too. But most people don’t buy those every day.

You're now contradicting yourself to fit the narrative. Probably a daily occurrence.

It'a about time we had interest rates at a realistic level. I'm all for inflationm

Contradicting myself, agreeing with Brexit? Are you utterly incapable of comprehension? Broccers, you can’t say black is white. I *will* pick you up on it.