The purchasing power of money has eroded at an average rate of 3.7% a year over the last three decades, thanks to inflation. Provided British pay packets keep pace, people have enough in their pockets to maintain their standard of living. But research reveals that everyday goods like bread, eggs and beer rise far faster than inflation. Also, inflation now is well above annual wages increases: 1.3% (excluding bonuses) last month - a decrease from 1.4% a month ago. DAILY MAIL
British Gas price hikes help boost annual profit 11% to more
than £600m
The profit rise comes as British Gas chief Phil Bentley leaves with a £10m combined share, salary and pension package. British Gas’s parent, Centrica, reported operating profits of £2.7bn – up 14%. British Gas raised its gas and electricity prices this winter by 6%. Much of the profits are thanks to a particularly cold winter. GUARDIAN(...and the rest of the profits are thanks to a particularly cowardly history of our governments bending over to the UK's profiteering energy cartel.)
Tesco to pay £6.5m fine for fixing milk and cheese prices
Tesco, Asda and Sainsburys were operating a cartel to keep
dairy prices high. The Office of Fair Trading estimated that the collusion led
to shoppers paying 2p more for a litre of milk and 2p more for 100g of cheese. Although
Tesco has always denied collusion, it finally lost a decade-long court battle. Supermarkets
and dairy processors have paid £39m collectively in fines for this price fix. TELEGRAPH
(I’m just grateful they haven’t been selling us horse
milk…)
Leading printer companies are shrinking the ink in their cartridges
Newer cartridges contain a fraction of the ink a similar
product contained a decade ago. For example, the Epson T032 colour cartridge
(released in 2002) is the same dimensions as the Epson colour T089 (released in
2008). But the T032 contains 16ml of ink and the T089 contains just 3.5ml of
ink. It's a similar story with Hewlett Packard (HP) cartridges. Cut open a HP
inkjet cartridge and you'll find what is going on. The size of the sponges
inside, which hold the ink, have progressively reduced over the years. The rest
of the cartridge is now simply empty space. In Epson cartridges the
ink tank has been systematically reduced in size. GUARDIAN
(“We are well aware of the problem. We keep getting these angry letters that fade out two-thirds the way down the page,” said the Director of Customer Care at Epson…)
(“We are well aware of the problem. We keep getting these angry letters that fade out two-thirds the way down the page,” said the Director of Customer Care at Epson…)
