Cost of living crisis/kWh Measuring Contest

Fucking Lizard people.

23 is cosy AF.

Anyone that has their house under 20 at any point in the year should be on a register.

Seems a no-brainer to do it and monitor the difference. Easy to come off it too (but a 9 month wait if you then want to go back on it).

I see own-brand groceries are continuing to drift upwards: 10p here, a couple of pence over there. Cheeky shits.

Petrol at my Tesco shot up. £1.37 two days ago and £1.44 today. No rhyme or reason when the expensive one down the road is £1.41.

Luxury! Been £1.42 for yonks now here.

To be fair, as I understand it, the supermarkets are absorbing some of the cost rises in an effort to keep prices reasonable. 

The way the UK supermarket industry works is quite unusual in that there's a lot of price matching and price stability, and consumers have come to expect it and think it's normal. AFAIK most other countries don't work that way. 

It's good for consumers as it tends to mean UK supermarket prices are very low. But it means the supermarkets have very fine profit margins, and farmers etc.. get very low profits. 

Over here, if there's a typhoon in the wrong area, the price of some foods will double for 6 months or so. Plus prices are very regional and very seasonal.
Plus every supermarket has different prices for every item, and they change them almost daily, so there's no price competition and consumers have no clue what a fair price for anything is. It's an intentional strategy of confusing consumers. 

UK prices for a lot of things have doubled in the last 15 years, while they're remained pretty fixed here due to deflation. For example, when I came here 15 years ago a draught beer was about twice the price of the UK, but in the last couple of years I think the UK has finally overtaken Japan in terms of a lot of prices. Yet supermarket food in the UK is *still* way cheaper than Japan for most things. 

Anyway, I just love defending huge corporations in the morning!  

Not really. Eating out is definitely cheaper now, but when I first came here it was pretty expensive. There are billions of restaurants though, so you can definitely find things in every price range.
If you went at lunch time you could get decent lunch sets for low prices, but the same meal would cost you a lot more at dinner time.

What Japan does have, which the UK didn't really have at the time, is a lot of mid range food options. The UK was 'fast food / takeout' or 'proper restaurant' with not much in between.

That said, the exchange rate has also varied a lot over the past 15 years, so that can have a massive impact on your perception of prices, depending on when you arrive.

Transport also depends on what you're looking at. Going from station to station in Tokyo is a lot cheaper than using the tube in London, but they don't have zones or daily caps. Monthly commuter passes are definitely way cheaper than London. But Shinkansens can be horribly expensive and don't have the range of fares that the UK has, and there were zero low cost airlines etc.. back then. There aren't that many now.

Electronics I never really noticed much of a difference, though it depends on the item. My last 2 laptops I've bought from Amazon USA because even with the postage they were cheaper than buying here.

Movie tickets were over 10 quid when I arrived, and still are now. DVDs were about 30 quid each when I arrived, though amazon prime here is dirt cheap now.

All depends on what you buy I guess.
But these days most things are probably cheaper than the UK.

Just got an above inflation pay rise...I had to double take.

monkey's a shareholder.

Civil service getting a £1,500 lump sum cost of living payment!!!

Tim Martin supporter huh?

Were you treating them every time before that? Sugar daddy geefe

Isn't that exactly opposite to what would make sense? When he lived with his parents, he had way less expenses than now, so he should have been paying back then.

I never paid for him. Not sure where this idea came from.

My point was I was more willing to go "out" when he lived with his parents and now I am much less willing to do it given he has his own place.