Inflate NOW!

So... the price of food is going up and not just because Spain has had a harsh winter. (There be irony in that statement beyond the pale) Food inflation is expected to reach 3% next month, compared to the 1.6% of this month and the -0.8% of the previous month. Your food is now going to go up in price.

Rewind to the autumn of 1971. My mum is working in a greengrocer's, in a shopping precinct, in Daventry and the price of spuds has just gone up from essentially 2d a pound (at Christmas 1970) to 3p a pound in the September of 71. The reasons for this huge rise in price was two-fold: a poor summer and autumn meant much of the crop was lost and the hangover of decimalisation; although decimalisation did seem to be a perfect opportunity of rising the price of some things by 100% without anyone really noticing. For some strange reason, despite only being 9 and not really showing any great affinity to maths or economics, something my mum said, over dinner one night, has stuck with me for 45 years. Mum was only 38 then and hearing her talk about 'old women' seemed strange to someone who thought all adults were 'old'.

She said something along the lines of this: "Two old women were in the shop today complaining about the price of potatoes. One of them said the price would go down soon, especially if we had a decent summer next year. I said to them, surely they were old enough to realise that prices never really go down." I suppose it was my first example of my rarely cynical mother being highly cynical and that is why it stayed with me, that and the fact that she was dead right - prices never really go down. You could argue that up until February food prices had been steadily declining over the space of the last year or so and, in real terms, have dropped remarkably since 1971. You only have to watch that fabulous Further Back in Time for Dinner and see how much more better off we are now, with our courgetti and our smoothies than we were with a bruised and warty apple or a gnarly spud covered in cow shit.

To say that all of the costs around food production have dropped, either through technology or cheap labour is almost a crass example of proving that food prices have come down, but it is a fact. The cost of your dinner isn't just what you paid for at the shop; it's the fuel used to prepare or store it, it's the energy used to propel it across the world or country; the packaging, the labour, the taxes... I know, you don't want to know or understand this, but it is a FACT. Unless you grow your own food, on your own land, using as little outside influences as possible, you might be able to grow a pound of potatoes for about 3p - in real terms.

I read something last week that both infuriated me and caused me bemusement, disbelief and amusement in equal measure. An alleged Remain voter saying that now inflation was 1.6% it was cheaper to buy food than it was because the underlying pay increases are 2%, so we're all better off. What was worse was when EVERY CONCEIVABLE point was made to prove to her that her statement was ignorant, insulting and plain wrong was met with an obstinacy I've rarely seen before; this person made the 'I voted Leave because of bent bananas' woman seem like a brain surgeon.

The argument is not going to be repeated here, not in full anyhow, but after everyone pointed out everything from inflation being monthly and wage rises being annual, to most people don't get wage rises (only the rich get them and they're usually massive ones which make the poor seem like they get one after averages come in) and haven't - in real terms - for seven years, so any increase is going to cost them, whether it is 0.001% or 50%, the person arguing her side concluded that [leaving the EU] really is a good thing in the long run because it will force people to shop at cheaper shops, thus forcing supermarkets to drop their prices while simultaneously ensuring their British staff get paid a fair amount of money... This person actually exists - she inhabits a discussion on inflation on The Guardian site and rides a rainbow-shitting unicorn through the golden streets of Moss Side... It's people like this that make fair-minded socialists like me understand why Neo-Nazism has become so popular...

The feeling seems to be that leaving the EU is now definitely going to increase food prices until our ministers can negotiate a deal with the EU and other countries to be able to import all of food for either exactly the same rates or less than we're currently paying as part of one of the largest economic blocs in the world - which is a statement almost as bizarre as the one in the paragraph above. The harsh reality is that supermarkets operate on a profit and loss basis, except without the loss bit. In general food prices are driven down by giving the producer of said food less money for it - outside of special offers, etc. You hear horror stories of major supermarkets holding fruit and vegetable growers to ransom and this is the model you can expect, this is why agriculture likes foreign workers, because they'll do it well for little fuss and seasonally. When people claim that leaving the EU will force employers to pay more for British staff, what actual reality are these people living in and has the rainbow-shitting unicorn done a whoopsie in your mouth?

Imagine this scenario. Employer A: I can employ 100 EU migrant workers (possibly for less than minimum wage), they want the job, will work hard and I make maximum profit, in a short window of time, from the supermarket.

Employer B: I can't employ 100 unemployed Brits, so the DWP has forced them to work for me. They don't want the job and do not do it satisfactorily for the National minimum wage and I am in danger of it not being harvested before it starts to rot in the fields and the supermarkets are demanding product, for less money, than I have to give them.

I mean we all know that once we start deporting all the people who clean the shit up in our already governmentally-ransacked NHS, it'll be down to us feckless Brits to find someone who will actually willingly do that kind of work. And how many people rely on immigrants to wipe their demented parents' arses, or bring them food in a care home, or treat them with a damned sight more respect than some questionably dodgy Brit who resents waiting on some old twat? Imagine a workforce that doesn't want to do it picking your strawberries or wiping your poor old mum's private parts?

Of course, there are the imbeciles who will argue that it's what we did in the 50s or 60s, but I have to point out to them that a lot of water has gone under the bridge since those halcyon days and I don't want my cheese rationed in 2017 or eat bread made partly with saw dust or have an outside toilet. Do I need to give you a very long list of what wasn't better than today in the 1950s or will you think I'm lying because I wasn't there? Maybe I'm doing it to deliberately screw up the post-Brexit economy; because all of those Brexiteers will need someone to blame when a loaf of bread is £2.50 because of wheat prices and once you get used to paying £2.50 for it, what's the point in bringing the price down? I mean, prices rarely really come down.

Watching our government, the trending signs from the economy and the fact that Conservatives like Ken Clarke and Michael bleedin' Hesseltine defending poor people with more vigour than you could imagine was possible surely must make you realise that the precipice is hurtling towards us, our guides are blind and retarded and we have a dead duck as an umbrella.

But, it's a price worth paying, isn't it? Having all this sovereignty and control back? The fact that Brexiteers are now rebelling against the sovereignty and control they originally asked for - presumably because they disagree with it - suggests a lot of misery and death has to happen before these pillocks of society realise what they have done.