Inflation

When I went to the supermarket this week I noticed something that brought it home to me, just how much my food bill has gone up. As I do have a loyalty card, hey it gives me free money once a quarter, I normally spend enough to get five to five fifty back each quarter. As each penny back represents a pound spent, my normal spend is about five hundred pounds per quarter.

As that equates to thirty eight pounds a week, I noticed that already I will be getting six pounds back and it is still five weeks until the end of this quarter. Apart from half a dozen bottles of wine, I have not been particularly extravagant. Well they were on special offer and I get a five percent discount on buying six at a time. Hiccup. I do keep a good supply of cat food in the house, as well as store cupboard items like pulses and tinned tomatoes, as well as tea and coffee, so it may balance out by the end, but it will be interesting to see what the final total will be.

I am noticing other areas where I am have to pay more, but I was glad that my gas bill for the last quarter was only twelve pounds. As that covers the summer quarter, I am expecting the next one to be much higher.

Also a few months ago the bus fares went up, so I have less money for travel as well. Its just great that I have the wood on my doorstep. As that at least remains free.

These are the factors that are effecting me personally, but while I could see this coming it still hurts me in my pocket. In previous posts I have talked about my thoughts regarding an economic collapse, however I expected it to occur after an environmental incident. While I got the sequence of events wrong the historic events that we have seen unfold were fully predictable. In fact the signs were there nearly ten years ago, but businesses, governments and regulators all put on blinkers and decided as long as the system was making money then the problems could be ignored.

However, while the system was making vast sums of money for International Business, International Banking, and via taxes and tariffs governments, it has left behind the majority of ordinary people. To take one example last year Lehman Brothers in Britain paid out eight billion in bonuses. That enriched a few while the folks that work in the real economy had to make do with the crumbs tossed from the high table. These people have enriched themselves and will not suffer from the collapse of capitalism.

The vast sums of money that governments are pumping in to prop up this failing system will cost us all. I suspect that this will also mean that because of old style thinking that it will slow down the investment in the renewable energy technology that is vital for all of us. However, it will only slow it down, as the lessons we will learn from this will be that small and local forms of business, trade and food and energy production is what is needed. The damage that big business has done to us will no longer be acceptable, and it will be from communities that solutions are found.

I know that some folks are frightened by this change, and that the way the media has portrayed the events makes it seem like a crisis, but while it is far from over, once matters start to settle then by thinking about ways to earn our living in ways that are sustainable, economically and environmentally, we will all find that we have a better life and a better world.