To be sick of sneezing and spending £20?

[ghicks]

Anyone else? I feel like everything costs more and more and I’d just like to moan about it. Every day it seems to be something else!

@Honourspen It's not relevant to the modern day though, because the sorts of foods that are cheap, are addictive and don't fill you up - even if you feel full for an hour, the sugar crash after the spike, will induce hunger in a way foods in the 70s and before just didn't. Anyway, the proof's in the pudding (excuse the pun), and the research, which shows that what you're saying just doesn't happen. "In the UK, healthier foods are three times more expensive per calorie than unhealthy foods".

See

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10947515/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-022-01242-9

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/19/uk-children-shorter-fatter-and-sicker-amid-poor-diet-and-poverty-report-finds

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/09/poverty-causes-obesity-low-income-families-need-to-be-better-off-to-eat-well

The thing about driving too, is that unlike yester-year, most people don't live a walkable distance to work. Many people also need a car FOR work, such as to get between different sites. As such, they will still need and use a car.

So unless UPFs get outlawed and we all miraculously get a job in a local mill, your argument is optimistic, to say the least.

I was just thinking this the other day.

I used to be able to afford to shop at Waitrose - not every day - but sometimes if it was on the way home.

Now we shop at Lidl topping up with Sainsbury's for variety.

I get that this is the "world's smallest violin" grumble when others have felt it much harder.

But your point is right.

But if everyone's wages go up, then prices also go up further.

The problem is that the UK has passed its peak and is now in decline. People need to adjust to the fact that the country isn't as prosperous as it once was. Little 'treats' that we've taken for granted in the past are likely to become increasingly unaffordable in the future.

It’s a joke, even takeaways are so expensive now, you spend the same as going out. DH and I spent £9.5 on two bags of chips the other day. We didn’t dare add in fish.

But if everyone's wages go up, then prices also go up further.

This is untrue. Wages are worth less than they were 20 years ago - they went through the floor in 2008 when we gave all our money to the banks and they have never recovered. That's also when we started printing money at which point prices started tipping upwards until 2020 when they galloped. Keeping wages low is blatantly not the answer. Stopping printing money might be. Getting our cash back from the banks might also help.

I spend £15-16 a day getting to work from zone 6 to zone 1 London. I actually called in sick before to avoid these costs. I try to budget but it’s impossible to stick to it as there’s always something that needs buying.

I know. I saw that there is likely to be a 7% rise in fuel costs again soon and thought: how the hell do they think people can pay this? They simply aren;t earning enough to be able to absorb these constant price hikes.

The cost of living is absolutely untenable right now. Something has to change and it certainly isn't increasing prices for the masses so the 1% can double their billions yet again, as they did during lockdowns. But we all seem too ground down and preoccupied to do anything about it, and decades of Tory indifference to the suffering of their fellow man has made people think they are powerless to effect change.

£24 for a TGI Friday burger!!!????
I live in Norway and can go out for burger in a restaurant that's (not quite) as expensive!
I don't go out often as cost of living has hit us here too.
But...£24! ....at TGI's!!!!!

I am without speech!

These prices are common even in pubs now. Theres a pub in Woolwich (a disadvantaged part of london) charging nearly this price for burgers.

it’s just ridiculous.

Yesterday, I went to a comedy show, the book the comedian was selling was 17.99!!!! Just for an autobiography… the comedian is not famous or v well known!

I've heard shoplifting for groceries is through the roof.

It's only been since Brexit and Covid that things have got so noticeably bad.

Prices are batshit atm and quality has gone to shit with skimpflation and shrinkflation.

Some food we used to buy has gone up by £1-2 each and the size has shrunk too, and the prices keep creeping up every week when I go shopping. One random example - I used to buy granola bars for £1. Now they're £1.45 and the size has reduced. It's just price gouging at this point.

And never mind things like buying new clothes, eating out or drinks. No chance. £8 for a single drink at the random pub near me.

How are we going to stop printing money though? We have record numbers of working age people out of work, and the highest tax burden in decades. The UK has a productivity problem and so living standards are falling.

1L of Olive oil in Sainsbury's is now £7.80. I'm sure it was around £3.50 before the war in Ukraine.

The cost of oil will of course be pushing up the cost of takeaways etc too.

Ukraine has fuck all to do with anything apart from being a means of distraction from the fact that our former PM sold London to the Russians twenty years ago back when he was mayor.

Olive oil is a separate matter anyway - that's down to diseased trees. Although I'm sure there's an additional element of supermarket profiteering, just for us, as well, now that we're out of the EU loop.

It’s not just food, it’s the other costs we need to pay just to get through the day. At my local railway station it used to cost £4 to park off-peak and something like £5.50 peak iirc (bit hazy about that as I avoided peak times as much as possible!).

Then a new company took over, they steadily pushed up the prices, and it's £10 for a day's peak parking now. OK, they do small discounts if you buy a week/month, but they scrapped the barrier with a stored-value pass-card that meant you could purchase a set number of entries and just use them until they ran out, which was good for people like me who don’t commute 5 days a week. You’re now penalised if you're a non-standard traveller working at odd times - no discount available.

I bought my train ticket the other day and they'd silently hoicked it up, too - the second increase this year. I always forget that they do this in January but also in autumn.

We get milk delivered but it’s very expensive compared to supermarket ! The company phone me last week asking if we want eggs as well. £2.47 for 6 eggs! No thanks! Only get the milk as we don’t use much at all.When DC were small it was at least 4 litres a week now it’s only 2 pints. If we need to cut back it will be the first thing to go!

Well Rachael Reeves has sadly postponed selling the government’s state in NatWest. Worth £6bilion.

Sorry stake. Watching telly and typing

Yes, that's what happens when money is devalued.

I have no doubt the continent as a whole is entering a period of decline due to demographics while other regions rise. But in the UK that's greatly exacerbated by the quite specific decision to remove ourselves from our trade bloc.

Money being worth less is also why house prices are so high - anyone who actually has money has been hoovering up assets including housing for years. Which creates its own nasty little loop of a greater percentage of wages for regular people being tied up in servicing mortgage debt - those banks again - in order to house themselves. It's rotten.

Agree it's just so bloody demoralising.

Ds has just started Uni too and honestly it's fucking madness how much parents need to subsidise. I have no clue how people afford more than one at a time at Uni.

I feel like I spend money every time I leave the house. I'm staying at home as much as possible right now.

Been doing that for years now.

We've done sensible things cut spending, cut again- eat cheaper go out much less buy secondhand where we can, put house things off - and gone after pay increases and yet it's not taking long for any buffers we do manage to make to slowly just go.

It's relentless and demoralising and yes worse when ill when you just can't find energy to watch pennies but if you don't you can easily get in a mess.

This! Growing up in the 70s-80s we ate out as a family only a handful of times in my whole childhood. DPs would go out for a meal on their wedding anniversary/ mum’s birthday ! I didn’t have a Chinese takeaway until I was 16 and bought it myself! It just wasn’t the norm then. My DC (born between 2000-2005) are used to eating out several times a year & much more in the way of luxuries than we had. I think we are returning to the days when things we see as the norm right now will be considered luxuries as they were in previous decades. Depressing!

Yeah. I just don’t get why people spend ££ on the rip off snacks at the cinema ! We’ve never done it & DC were always happy to choose sweets etc from poundshop / Asda or wherever was close to cinema.
Local Vue cinema starts from £5 a seat so for us as family of 5 a cinema trip would be around £40 inc drinks & snacks! And as long as the movie was good that would be.
a joyful experience!

Yeah in the 70s and 80s there were few "low key but nice" little places - tiny little hatches with a couple of tables and an espresso machine wasn't a UK thing but a continental one - cafés were caffs, everything else was expensive. Eating out was a once in a blue moon luxury because there was no middle market in hospitality.

I remember in 1994 when a new-style café opened in our corner of North London me and my flatmate purposely went out to have a coffee, to get in on this sophisticated European vibe that we were told would become the norm, sat on a grimy high street with traffic thundering past us thinking we were oh so chi-chi. I was earning £120 a week so I couldn't afford to go to restaurants but I could afford to go to coffee shops. Then pubs got in on the act and suddenly you could get meals for a lot less than restaurants. And cheaper booze than restaurants too! We didn't have more disposable income than people in the 70s, but we did have more choice.

What's happening now isn't a return to the 70s because those types of businesses are still around. But they are now no longer affordable, is the difference. In the 70s they didn't exist at all. Possibly they won't again soon.

Ukraine has fuck all to do with anything

Apart from the fact that the UK is a massive importer of energy and energy prices affect the cost of pretty much everything.

The UKs problems began in the 80s when the salaries of higher earners started increasing at a much faster rate than the salaries of lower earners. As a result, the wealth distribution in the UK is one of the most unequal in Europe. We only see it more now because of the COL crisis, and the fact that lower earners can no longer afford to live on their wages. Government has to pump out more money in benefits while the richest get richer.