88V8 wrote:You call that inflation? Pffft.
Yesterday paid >£20/lb for fillet steak from the farmer down the lane.
I recall my mother in the 60s returning in a high dudgeon from shopping because the butcher had charged her 7/6d for fillet.
Mind you, it's not all bad. When the grain shortage really kicks in, it will be cheaper to eat cake
V8
We have stealth inflation too.
So I've doing an outdoor "building" project. Just a gravel filled path lined by bricks I've mucked down to prevent gravel escaping into the lawn.
Ready mix mortar - the local merchants no longer actually sell this "ready mixed" i.e. chuck the whole lot into the barrow, add water mix around for 2 mins. This obviously requires all the ingredients to be bone-dry else the mix would go off in storage. Instead you get a sealed bag of wet sand, and inside this another smaller very well sealed bag of portland cement, correctly measured etc. The guys explained this is, as far as they know, a cost issue which their suppliers attempted to offset this way, and "it's been like that since the pandemic mate".
This makes quite a difference! Since I had to pre mix in the barrow myself for about 5-10 minutes prior to wetting it. Which is v hard + tedious work. Especially after several bags.
Next "it's been like that since the pandemic mate"/inflation issue. I tried the local guys, Travis Perkins and Wickes. Cannot easily buy graded driveway gravel now, i.e. gravel where the pebbles are uniformly just short of an inch in size. No mate, our suppliers now say, it's too pricey to grade it that well. Instead one puts up with "20mm and down" a.k.a. between 4mm-20mm pebbles. Of course the larger pebbles will rise to the surface, but that's not really the point. The additional reason for wanting the bigger pebbles is for good drainage characteristics.
Groan....
Matt