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Re:UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of fo... by mike_hearn on Sunday November 20, 2022 @12:17PM (#33682941)
To what degree are they worse than the EU's?

You're making a very slippery argument here. You started by asserting that things are worse in the UK than elsewhere in Europe and this is due to Brexit, but you didn't name any specific way in which things are worse. So you were called out on it because this discussion is about a single data point - food price inflation - which is not different to elsewhere. Now you're saying well no, but if things were worse then it'd be the fault of Brexit.

HN discussions on anything UK related seem to always be like this nowadays. Intellectual curiousity is dead, killed by motivated reasoning. "Things are worse, I won't say what, but if anything is worse, then it's clearly Brexit and not anything else". That's not a valid argument, it's not even an attempt to lay the groundwork for an argument. We get it - you wish no country ever left the EU - but if you want to blame leaving then you need to show a causal relation, not simply assert that the EU can only ever make things better in any conceivable capacity.

Re:UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of fo... by hn_throwaway_99 on Sunday November 20, 2022 @12:37PM (#33683141)
The UK CPI increase year-over-year was 11.1% in October [1].

The France CPI increase was 6.2% for the same period [2].

That is a huge difference for similar developed economies.

1. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bull....

2. https://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/france-inflatio....

Re:UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of fo... by mike_hearn on Sunday November 20, 2022 @12:42PM (#33683193)
Now compare to Germany.

The difference is caused by France more heavily subsidizing/capping energy costs. It reflects a short term deviation in market policy triggered by gas shortages, not some fundamental divergence.

Re:UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of fo... by hn_throwaway_99 on Sunday November 20, 2022 @12:55PM (#33683317)
Exactly, that's specifically why I pointed out the issue of Germany's poor energy decisions. Germany is getting killed due to their decision to hook their wagon pretty much entirely to Russia for energy, and their inflation rate of 10.4% in October still was lower than the UK's.

The UK is simply doing worse WRT inflation than any comparable country, and nobody, not even Conservative UK politicians, really debates this.

Re:UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of fo... by vladvasiliu on Sunday November 20, 2022 @01:13PM (#33683533)
How do you define a "comparable country"?

According to [0], the UK isn't doing that much worse than Germany (12.2 vs 12.6%). It's doing same as Norway and better than the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic and way better than Sweden. The latter being barely better than Ukraine, which is actually at war. Now I agree those are "smaller countries", so maybe not comparable?

Some "peripheral countries" are doing great (Romania), others terribly (Hungary). This is to say that values are over the place. I don't see any emerging trend that would allow easily to pinpoint the reason prices are going up in this or that country but not in the other.

The issue with Germany's decision, wrt to nuclear, is that it affects everybody because of the way electricity prices are set in the EU (priced for the most expensive production).

[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/consumer-price-ind...

Re:UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of fo... by mike_hearn on Sunday November 20, 2022 @01:14PM (#33683543)
No, the UK is doing about the same. Look at the data:

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate

Netherlands: 14.3%

UK: 11.1%

Germany: 10.4%

Euro area: 10.6%

Italy: 11.8%

etc.

"The UK is simply doing worse WRT inflation than any comparable country, and nobody, not even Conservative UK politicians, really debates this."

Nobody debates this because outside of the HN anti-UK bubble nobody is claiming it, and nobody is claiming it because it isn't true. This is what I mean by HN discussions about the UK being hot garbage for the last few years. Way too many posters are willing to simply make things up in order to attack the UK.