UK inflation... where will it go within 12 months? I suspect 6-8%

[Dorkins]

3 hours ago, PeanutButter said:

My grocery bill has gone up these last 6mo. I’m seeing some lower priced items disappear entirely. I can see them shifting things around for a bit though, claiming it’s lower.

This isn't my experience. Food staples are still very cheap - root vegetables, big bags of fruit, tinned beans/tomatoes/chickpeas, frozen veg/chicken breast/fish fillets/ginger/garlic, big bags of basmati rice etc. Had a huge turkey leg off the Morrisons butcher counter yesterday for £4, enough high quality muscle for about 8 meals. The cost of home-cooked food and utilities seems to have been flat for about a decade. Luxuries like admission prices and food and drink out of the house have gone up a lot though.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Dorkins

[Si1]

2 hours ago, gruffydd said:

There's plenty of data coming through - try using it. 

You have to realise that EA bulls like to use selective simplistic sums to support their arguments, but then come along with 'yeah but that's just your opinion' when you tear their maths apart. It is a central plank of anti-intellectualism.

[winkie]

1 hour ago, Dorkins said:

This isn't my experience. Food staples are still very cheap - root vegetables, big bags of fruit, tinned beans/tomatoes/chickpeas, frozen veg/chicken breast/fish fillets/ginger/garlic, big bags of basmati rice etc. Had a huge turkey leg off the Morrisons butcher counter yesterday for £4, enough high quality muscle for about 8 meals. The cost of home-cooked food and utilities seems to have been flat for about a decade. Luxuries like admission prices and food and drink out of the house have gone up a lot though.

Agree, perhaps all those buying ready meals and take away are keeping the basic staples cheaper?.......near sell by date non perishable foods really good prices, there are even firms that sell to the public good to go foods can buy in bulk and split between eachother...learn to cook and buy local, healthy and seasonal.....save a fortune. Of course not everyone wants to save they prefer to spend and love convenience......each to their own, no right or wrong, just different consequences.

[Unmoderated]

18 minutes ago, winkie said:

Agree, perhaps all those buying ready meals and take away are keeping the basic staples cheaper?.......near sell by date non perishable foods really good prices, there are even firms that sell to the public good to go foods can buy in bulk and split between eachother...learn to cook and buy local, healthy and seasonal.....save a fortune. Of course not everyone wants to save they prefer to spend and love convenience......each to their own, no right or wrong, just different consequences.

Totally agree, and there's a cheeky hybrid here with people like 'Eat Fresh'. We started doing it when lockdown closed the restaurants and we love it. No waste as you get the exact right amount of ingredients and cook a big variety of dishes from scratch - learn all the basics as you go and it all tastes great!

Order online, delivered to your door in a chilled box. For us a gamechanger.

[winkie]

32 minutes ago, Unmoderated said:

Totally agree, and there's a cheeky hybrid here with people like 'Eat Fresh'. We started doing it when lockdown closed the restaurants and we love it. No waste as you get the exact right amount of ingredients and cook a big variety of dishes from scratch - learn all the basics as you go and it all tastes great!

Order online, delivered to your door in a chilled box. For us a gamechanger.

Would not do that myself, but sure convenient to some........keep the spices, grow the herbs, make the sauces and can make almost anything from anything......pasta, rice, potato or bread the foundation......tins of beans and toms, fish, dried pulses, dried fruit and nuts.....frozen veg........what you get in a box can cook from what have in a cupboard and fresh from down the road for a fraction of the price.......all that is required is some scales and creativity.

[Fromage Frais]

7 hours ago, TheCountOfNowhere said:

That's interesting FF.

What have you done with the CBILs cash, did you use it to pay the government contributions or did you bank it and can pay it back ?

Wise move was 50K in bitcoin and 50K in tesla  

Jesus, what a mess.

I am in shock at the actions of the government, they make little sense to me unless I look it from the stand point that the money  markets broke down in Nov 2019.  It was a very fortuitous/coincidental pandemic for them to get things moving and keep the plates spinning.  House prices were just about to go negative yet, here we are, up 8% in a year and the MSM are ramping like hell.

 

Bit of both summer was not bad but when closed I have xxk fixed costs per month which when I first closed up to a while to get down.

Its looking like a busy summer so I may pay some of it down sooner.

Houses in my viewing bracket have gone up 100k ironically maybe everyone else is using theirs that way.

[PeanutButter]

6 hours ago, Dorkins said:

This isn't my experience. Food staples are still very cheap - root vegetables, big bags of fruit, tinned beans/tomatoes/chickpeas, frozen veg/chicken breast/fish fillets/ginger/garlic, big bags of basmati rice etc. Had a huge turkey leg off the Morrisons butcher counter yesterday for £4, enough high quality muscle for about 8 meals. The cost of home-cooked food and utilities seems to have been flat for about a decade. Luxuries like admission prices and food and drink out of the house have gone up a lot though.

Yeah well I get Waitrose delivery. It's gone up, but according to @winkie I deserve it because I'm not harvesting my own avocados and grinding my own cinnamon   

[Dorkins]

21 hours ago, gruffydd said:

> HPI running out of control, which will loop-feed into inflation

If people are spending more on housing wouldn't that mean they have less to spend on other things i.e. HPI is actually deflationary for other prices? Also vice versa, if people are spending more on other things that leaves less to spend on housing.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Dorkins

[zugzwang]

8 minutes ago, Dorkins said:

If people are spending more on housing wouldn't that mean they have less to spend on other things i.e. HPI is actually deflationary for other prices? Also vice versa, if people are spending more on other things that leaves less to spend on housing.

It's not a zero sum game. Each new mortgage adds to the quantity of money in circulation. If that additional quantum of debt  is employed productively we get growth, if not we get inflation.

Your second point is correct. The cost of living is so high that it prohibits capital formation. The govt workaround is to gift FTBs with a mortgage deposit.

[bobbysnuts]

I work for a major uk packaging company and we’ve had 3 raw material increases since January with a 4th on the way in July.

in total raw material prices have increased over 20% with another 6% on the way 1st July.

Pallet prices have increased over 35% since October last year.

Crazy inflation is already here for us with no sign of stopping, we’ve never been busier, lead times gone from 2-3 weeks before Pandemic to 6-7 weeks. Our sister site that focuses mainly on e-commerce have gone from 3-4 weeks lead times to quoting end of September for delivery.

[micawber]

14 hours ago, winkie said:

Would not do that myself, but sure convenient to some........keep the spices, grow the herbs, make the sauces and can make almost anything from anything......pasta, rice, potato or bread the foundation......tins of beans and toms, fish, dried pulses, dried fruit and nuts.....frozen veg........what you get in a box can cook from what have in a cupboard and fresh from down the road for a fraction of the price.......all that is required is some scales and creativity.

Absolutely. I also load my recipe ingredients into a spreadsheet where I can rate the meals, track the cooking times, enter the dates made, etc. So whenever I have too much of an ingredient left over, eg. half a cabbage, or a store cupboard item approaching an end date, I can easily find a recipe to use it up with.

Although a bit ********, it's an excellent way of scheduling a red meat, poultry, fish twice, vegetarian 3 times week of meals, targeting the best ingredients for the time of the year.

[simon2]

If you're talking about the 'official' rates, then no, HPI does not feed into it. The way it is calculated with imputed rents there might actually be a drag on it if supply exceeds demand at the current market price in more places apart from London.

That's how we have a case where people are probably poorer over the past decade and a bit, its just that rising costs have been cancelled out by reduced mortgages, so overall people can feel richer.

Undeniably the traction is upwards, CPI might threaten the 2% this year, and go above that later. But I feel if its going to 5%+ quickly either calculations will be revised to dampen it or other measures taken.

If you are talking a real rate which takes into account everything, then 6-8% has been here already.

The ideal setup for the government is low reported inflation with high real inflation. That justifies continued stimulus, reduces the value of debt and also suppresses wage increases, like the 1% NHS pay etc.

[Si1]

28 minutes ago, simon2 said:

.

The ideal setup for the government is low reported inflation with high real inflation. That justifies continued stimulus, reduces the value of debt and also suppresses wage increases, like the 1% NHS pay etc.

Well it does until you get rioting on the streets, starving families and/or a collapsing currency.

[winkie]

54 minutes ago, micawber said:

Absolutely. I also load my recipe ingredients into a spreadsheet where I can rate the meals, track the cooking times, enter the dates made, etc. So whenever I have too much of an ingredient left over, eg. half a cabbage, or a store cupboard item approaching an end date, I can easily find a recipe to use it up with.

Although a bit ********, it's an excellent way of scheduling a red meat, poultry, fish twice, vegetarian 3 times week of meals, targeting the best ingredients for the time of the year.

That's taking it a step further......worth it to some, not for everyone, so when people say there is food inflation there is......but we can reduce that greatly by the actions we take, the way we shop, store and cook food......that doesn't mean eating inferior food, it can mean eating better food for less.....

[simon2]

23 minutes ago, Si1 said:

Well it does until you get rioting on the streets, starving families and/or a collapsing currency.

Of course, that's the way it is heading.

But I think that day is some way off yet. 

The gap between the top few % and the rest has widened quite a lot since the GFC and nobody has given a shit really.

For the vast middle class, throw them a few HPI crumbs and they will be happy. They don't care that most of the stimulus accrues to the top few %, because they have got their cut.

Working class riots such as the London ones isn't going to bring around real change, but once the middle classes join it then the government gets afraid. Like poll tax. 

IMO it would take sharply declining house prices for the middle class to get unsettled, because that's most of their wealth nowadays.

[zugzwang]

2 hours ago, bobbysnuts said:

I work for a major uk packaging company and we’ve had 3 raw material increases since January with a 4th on the way in July.

in total raw material prices have increased over 20% with another 6% on the way 1st July.

Pallet prices have increased over 35% since October last year.

Crazy inflation is already here for us with no sign of stopping, we’ve never been busier, lead times gone from 2-3 weeks before Pandemic to 6-7 weeks. Our sister site that focuses mainly on e-commerce have gone from 3-4 weeks lead times to quoting end of September for delivery.

Thanks. Real numbers rather than guesses.

I can absolutely confirm what your saying from my own contacts.  20% on 'everything' since the start of the year, lead times blowing out 3 days per day etc.

[winkie]

2 hours ago, bobbysnuts said:

I work for a major uk packaging company and we’ve had 3 raw material increases since January with a 4th on the way in July.

in total raw material prices have increased over 20% with another 6% on the way 1st July.

Pallet prices have increased over 35% since October last year.

Crazy inflation is already here for us with no sign of stopping, we’ve never been busier, lead times gone from 2-3 weeks before Pandemic to 6-7 weeks. Our sister site that focuses mainly on e-commerce have gone from 3-4 weeks lead times to quoting end of September for delivery.

Not that surprising considering all the packaging,card and bubble wrap required to post almost anything and everything......think of all the trees, raw material required for that, all the extra plastic to dispose of.....loo rolls have jumped up in price also.......

[TheCountOfNowhere]

20 minutes ago, winkie said:

Not that surprising considering all the packaging,card and bubble wrap required to post almost anything and everything......think of all the trees, raw material required for that, all the extra plastic to dispose of.....loo rolls have jumped up in price also.......

Went to B&Q last night...briming with stock for the 1st time in a long time.  No one there to buy.

Stomething doesn't add up to me.

I think we're seeing a lot of people put their prices up to cover their losses, this is a classic recession tactic, sell less for more....trouble is...will people buy at these new prices. 

Time will tell.  

I'd be more inclined to buy shares/gold right now than over pay for a new car/garden furniture/tat to keep someone in business that's already had the benefit of my taxes.

 

[TheCountOfNowhere]

1 hour ago, Si1 said:

Well it does until you get rioting on the streets, starving families and/or a collapsing currency.

That's a long way off...until it's not.

All the "middle class" people I know are on the brink, I hate to think how the working classes are getting on. 

Raise Interest rates 2% and the middle classes are ****ed. Inflation with no wage rises, they're ***ed. 1 job loss, they're ****ed.   Divorce, they're ****ed. House Price crash, they're ****ed.  

Massive wage inflation, they're sitting pretty, that's the only thing that can save them.  

 

Will be interesting to see if all these companies paying more for stock manage to shift it to the end consumer.

Who here is buying tat at the moment ?

New phone anyone ?

Latest gadgets ?

New car ? 

Who's moving house at these crazy prices ?

I think there's a reason the number of listings on rightmove has collapse, no one has the confidence or the wherewithal to move house, that does not bode well for the economy of a whole. 

If 1-2 million EU immigrants, as reported, have left there's another huge hole.

We wont know what's going on until furlough ends ( if it ends ) and people have to fend for themselves.  Tories sounds like they want CV19 to stay forever, so they must want the excuse to hand out free money and pump up their asset prices ad infinitum.

Scary times.

[zugzwang]

Ten Houses is the Daddy!!

Gordon Brown's post-war record absolutely destroyed by the big spending Kenyan.

 

https://www.lse.co.uk/news/top-news-covid-spend-pushes-uk-government-deficit-to-worst-since-ww2-b591wajb4qakpva.html

(Alliance News) - The huge sums that the UK government has borrowed during the Covid-19 crisis have pushed the deficit to its widest since the end of the Second World War, according to new figures.

The Office for National Statistics said that public sector net borrowing “the government's deficit" reached GBP303.1 billion in the financial year to the end of March.

This was 14.5% of gross domestic product, the highest level since 1946, when the deficit hit 15.2% of GDP.

It is a rise from a deficit of GBP57 billion in the tax year that ended March 2020.

In the post-war era, the deficit peaked in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, hitting around 10% of GDP. The average deficit since 1970 has been 3.4% of GDP.

The last year's borrowing pushed public sector net debt up to GBP2.142 trillion, which is 97.7% of GDP the biggest proportion since the early 1960s.

[Unmoderated]

17 hours ago, winkie said:

Would not do that myself, but sure convenient to some........keep the spices, grow the herbs, make the sauces and can make almost anything from anything......pasta, rice, potato or bread the foundation......tins of beans and toms, fish, dried pulses, dried fruit and nuts.....frozen veg........what you get in a box can cook from what have in a cupboard and fresh from down the road for a fraction of the price.......all that is required is some scales and creativity.

and time, but I agree with you and that way of eating for sure! One day I'll grow as much of my own food as I can. 

[TheCountOfNowhere]

13 minutes ago, zugzwang said:

Ten Houses is the Daddy!!

Gordon Brown's post-war record absolutely destroyed by the big spending Kenyan.

 

https://www.lse.co.uk/news/top-news-covid-spend-pushes-uk-government-deficit-to-worst-since-ww2-b591wajb4qakpva.html

(Alliance News) - The huge sums that the UK government has borrowed during the Covid-19 crisis have pushed the deficit to its widest since the end of the Second World War, according to new figures.

The Office for National Statistics said that public sector net borrowing “the government's deficit" reached GBP303.1 billion in the financial year to the end of March.

This was 14.5% of gross domestic product, the highest level since 1946, when the deficit hit 15.2% of GDP.

It is a rise from a deficit of GBP57 billion in the tax year that ended March 2020.

In the post-war era, the deficit peaked in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, hitting around 10% of GDP. The average deficit since 1970 has been 3.4% of GDP.

The last year's borrowing pushed public sector net debt up to GBP2.142 trillion, which is 97.7% of GDP the biggest proportion since the early 1960s.

Who profits from all this borrowing.?

What industry did Mr Sunak used to work in ? 

 

[longgone]

2 hours ago, TheCountOfNowhere said:

That's a long way off...until it's not.

All the "middle class" people I know are on the brink, I hate to think how the working classes are getting on. 

Raise Interest rates 2% and the middle classes are ****ed. Inflation with no wage rises, they're ***ed. 1 job loss, they're ****ed.   Divorce, they're ****ed. House Price crash, they're ****ed.  

Massive wage inflation, they're sitting pretty, that's the only thing that can save them.  

 

Will be interesting to see if all these companies paying more for stock manage to shift it to the end consumer.

Who here is buying tat at the moment ?

New phone anyone ?

Latest gadgets ?

New car ? 

Who's moving house at these crazy prices ?

I think there's a reason the number of listings on rightmove has collapse, no one has the confidence or the wherewithal to move house, that does not bode well for the economy of a whole. 

If 1-2 million EU immigrants, as reported, have left there's another huge hole.

We wont know what's going on until furlough ends ( if it ends ) and people have to fend for themselves.  Tories sounds like they want CV19 to stay forever, so they must want the excuse to hand out free money and pump up their asset prices ad infinitum.

Scary times.

2% rate rise would suit me lovely. 

[Unmoderated]

2 hours ago, TheCountOfNowhere said:

Went to B&Q last night...briming with stock for the 1st time in a long time.  No one there to buy.

Stomething doesn't add up to me.

I think we're seeing a lot of people put their prices up to cover their losses, this is a classic recession tactic, sell less for more....trouble is...will people buy at these new prices. 

Time will tell.  

I'd be more inclined to buy shares/gold right now than over pay for a new car/garden furniture/tat to keep someone in business that's already had the benefit of my taxes.

B&Q and Screwfix have been flat out in my experience. I just did a large project in the garden and B&Q (and Wickes) had no quick set cement. Looked like the place had been gutted but not sure if knock on from Suez? 

I guess with people at home all this time they're noticing more all the stuff that has to be done. I've spent weeks over the past year sorting out quite an overgrown garden and some crazy layouts on the driveway plus various other stuff that just needed to be dealt with. 

I guess now though people are out in the beer gardens rather than their own?

[TheCountOfNowhere]

43 minutes ago, longgone said:

2% rate rise would suit me lovely. 

You and everyone bar the tories and the 1%

 

Anywayt, just had to buy some adblue...jesus save us, it was down 22p ( 10 Litres ).