2 March - Inflation and deflation
I continue to find the rising cost of living very worrying, not for myself, I
can get by, but I hear far too many stories of hardship through Twitter and the
like. One thread I followed featured a mother who was £1,300 in
debt to British Gas. She had a new born to keep warm. That led to other people reporting up to £3,000 of debt. To
my mind they are using far too much energy and probably someone should be
advising them on a one to one basis but meanwhile they are in big trouble.
Before mitigating factors (†) my energy bills are between £20 and £30 a week on
electricity; charging the car swings it towards the higher figure. Usually under £20
for gas, but I am active during the day and don’t put the central heating on
until evening unless I am expecting a visitor.
Mitigating factors I will not bore you with bring the total cost down to about £100 a
month, maybe just a little bit more, but I haven’t got a baby in the house.
What can be done? Fortunately <sarcasm> we have a Chancellor who recognises the problem
and has responded by reducing the energy price cap by more than the wholesale price
is coming down. The result is that what you pay will increase by around 20% in only four weeks’ time.
What Hunt doesn’t want to talk about is that the £67 a month subsidy is coming to
an end so most customers will see a 20% price hike plus £67 a month.
The official inflation rate is total nonsense for poorer people because they
only buy essentials. I replaced a 16 year old TV last year and the price has
since reduced by just over 20%. The blu-ray player is down by 11% but I don’t buy a new TV every week.
Such reductions have an impact on the inflation rate.
My weekly trip to Sainsbury’s has revealed many items that have gone up by 50%
over the past year. That must really hurt some people.
I was hurt this week too.
On
28th January while driving on the M25 with more than 250 miles in front of me
the tyre pressure warning came up on the dashboard. As luck would have it
Clackets Lane was only a mile ahead so I pulled in and pumped up the tyre from
its 25psi to 42 expecting it to deflate again with a call at every Service Area in prospect.
The tyre never deflated again. Then last Sunday while parked with the front
wheel turned hard left I spotted a shiny thing in the tread. It was the worn down hexagonal head of a bolt.
I booked a puncture repair for Tuesday but the hole was bigger than the biggest
available plug. The tyre had cost £146 on 8th September 2022 and replacing it with an
identical item at the very same place cost £216. Partly explained by a
discount when I bought four but I think I may have been ripped off.
But better than a blow out on the motorway. The good news is that my driving
licence will be 60 years old in a couple of months time and it is only my second puncture.
† The £20 and £30 energy figures above make no allowance for any
government subsidy or for the fact that I am on an Economy 7 style tariff. They
have been recalculated for a standard capped tariff. In practice my electricity
bill is close to being negative. You can blame that on idiotic government
policies. Started by Milliband for Labour, made worse by a succession of blue buffoons.