The Lemon Fool

There has been a lot spoken and written of inflation in the last few weeks so I decided yesterday to do a check and lay in some long term stuff, along the lines of the stock piling of loo rolls. My conclusion is that most of the inflation at the moment is in the form of fuel oil in its various forms. Certainly petrol has significantly increased in price and so has my domestic fuel oil. From this coming week obviously the price of electricity will rise and so will gas prices although the latter is of no concern to me as I am off grid. I have a fixed price contract until September for electricity and do not use much anyway.

So, foodstuffs etc. Yesterday I did my usual shop in Tesco and M & S. I live alone so I do not buy very much anyway, but I have gone through my receipts and I think without exception all items are much the same as they have ever been. Things where I am certain, are the same price, porridge oats, butter and cleaning materials (which are nearly all manufactured by Unilever as I am a shareholder) have not so far changed. Anyway, it means I have done a bit of stockpiling and have kept the receipts so will check in a few months when I need to replenish stuff.

Obviously the cost of transport must be rising and that feeds through to everything, presumably with delays, so we will see general price rises no doubt but for the moment I do not see much evidence.

Dod

Dod101 wrote:There has been a lot spoken and written of inflation in the last few weeks so I decided yesterday to do a check and lay in some long term stuff.

We did similar at Tesco yesterday, rice, pasta, red lentils. Prices of these weren't excessive.

I did read a very interesting article yesterday, I think the Telegraph, that Xi has taken the view that China must take a short term approach to ensure that food and energy security is a priority in the medium term for it's population. China is producing huge quantities of coal and they are about to ramp this up significantly along with a further increase in their coal fired power station fleet. In addition to securing imports. The conclusion was that this would make more gas available for the market and the price could collapse tempering energy inflation in the west.

Have a look at the baseload energy prices:

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-data-and-research/data-portal/wholesale-market-indicators

Among staples, milk is up in the last month or two.

But groceries inflation seems to take a different form these days. Not so much explicit price rises, as the disappearance of cheaper items from the shelves altogether. Particularly those cheaper items which are just as good as something more expensive - whether from the same shop or elsewhere!

Jack Monroe, who has been recording prices for a decade, has a good take on rising costs of low-cost foodstuffs.
https://fortune.com/2022/01/27/uk-infla ... ett-vimes/
Various reference to her 'Vimes Boots Index' of inflation can be found online.