Inflation means continued cost-of-living hell for you; not so much for the Tories
Jeremy Hunt: he’s all right, Jack, because he has public money propping up his worthless hide. You aren’t so lucky.
Inflation figures for March 2023 have been released – and they foretell continued agony for struggling UK citizens who are trying to make ends meet in the face of Tory tomfoolery.
The baseline figure has – stubbornly, we are told, as if inflation is a sentient creature – remained above 10 per cent, falling from 10.4 in February just three-tenths of a percentage point to 10.1 per cent in March.
The reason wasn’t energy prices this time, though. No… it’s food.
The average price of food and non-alcoholic drinks has risen by a whopping 19.1 per cent in the year to March 2023 – the sharpest 12-month increase since August 1977.
This is partly because the availability of fruit, vegetables and sugar was hit by poor harvests in Europe and North Africa.
And importing those goods has become more expensive because the pound’s performance on the currency markets has been weak.
Furthermore, higher energy bills have meant increased transport costs and global supply chain disruption between March 2022 and January this year.
These energy bills, caused by the war in Ukraine, have forced producers to hike their prices.
Much of the above can be attributed to Brexit, which has added hundreds of pounds to the average UK household shopping bill due to increased transport and customs costs.
And the domestic apple-growing industry has suffered due to a lack of workers from the Continent, high energy costs, and low cash returns from supermarkets that buy the produce.
And prices are unlikely to fall:
Martin Deboo, consumer goods analyst at Jefferies, warned that the high prices are unlikely to fall, following the sharpest 12-month increase since August 1977.
He said: “Absolute pricing rarely falls very much.
“We expect consumers to be paying permanently more for products in 2023 onwards than they did in 2021.
This is particularly bad news for those of us on lower incomes, who are already struggling to make ends meet.
The Bank of England may decide that another interest rate increase is necessary, in which case many people with mortgages may be in danger of losing their homes.
In the midst of this, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has stepped in to claim – improbably – that “we can get through this”:
This Writer wonders who the “we” might be who can “get through this”. Is it just high-waged Tories?
I think Hunt’s words are a sop for people who are about to lose much of what they have spent their lives building – due to the ignorance and stupidity of the Conservative government in which he is a senior figure.
He just wants to keep us all tranquillised and quiet so we don’t end up protesting French-style.
But if anybody has an excuse to set their country on fire, it’s us.
The super-selfish Tories, with their Brexit and their privatisations, have deliberately harmed our quality of life. Saying “we can get through this” is no consolation at all.
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Hunt saying ‘we can get through this’ was referencing his fellow fascist tories who are all wealthy and delighted to see their incomes increasing!
Brexit is still giving us such wonderful bonuses – food constantly increasing and despite fact EU countries not suffering such huge food increases good ol’ backwater little england has experienced the highest twelve month increase since 1977!!
Yeah, like we’re all in this together.
low cash returns from supermarkets that buy the produce
Yet supermarkets put up prices as if paying extra.