Vicky Goes On (Again)

Month: Oct 2025

  • Inflation. Everything costs £20

    In the olden days (anything longer than 5 years ago, but which 5 years? This could be a much longer tangent but basically, time is an illusion and everything was either “the other day”, “5 years ago (but resolutely NOT 2020), or “in the past“) I always thought of Coke (Coca-Cola) as being 50p and figuring out the cost of foreign money from that. About 5 years ago (see tangent) this changed to £1. Listen, I know we all know the Freddo cost price index but I am no economist so I used the price of a can of Coke. Now, here’s the horror: A can of Coke, when not purchased as part of a Meal Deal is £1.55. One POUND and FIFTY FIVE PENCE. In GBP.

    My friend Kelinda writes: ‘Why is everything £20?’
    And she’s right. Everything is £20. I leave my house to buy some vegetables for an evening meal and the price is £20. What are these vegetables made from? I’m not even shopping at Waitrose. This is Asda. And my wages are alright, you know? I spend £150,000 a week on food shopping and I don’t even buy the meat. Everything is either £5 or £20 or £1000.

    And here’s the kicker – it really, really doesn’t have to be this way. B&M reported earnings will be between £510m to £560m in 2025 which is an 18% decline. So fucking what? It’s still a lot of fucking money. Why is everything in capitalism growth, growth, growth? Because of the shareholders. Look, I get that the shareholders want their sweet, sweet green but you cannot seriously look me in my eyeballs and say £510 million GBP Sterling cash money is not a lot of money. You cannot talk straight out of your mouths and expect me to think, “yeah, you know what? You should be putting Coke up to £3 a can. Coca-Cola is a poor li’l company with no money at all. Won’t somebody think of the shareholders?”

    £11m was paid out to the UKs privatised water companies as part of the “water restoration fund” in April 2024. £78BILLION was paid by water companies to its shareholders since privatisation started in 1989 (with much thanks to the Private Eye for the figures). All that and approximately 590 million litres of water are lost DAILY by Thames Water alone. I pay those bitches over £50 a month. Literally falls from the sky and I pay that. (OK, I pay half but the point damn well still stands).

    What are we supposed to do? Pay £20 for eggs, bodywash, tomatoes. And then £30, £40, £700? Where will it end? When do we say, “enough. I am not paying £14 for a Freddo!”?

    A lot of companies are going bust but I wonder if it is because they’re also pricing themselves to extinction? Capitalism is supposed to be about market forces and the consumer dictating through their wallets what we want and what we are willing to purchase. But, I’m not willing to spend £4 on a tomato. And what are we left with? We do need to purchase food. We literally cannot sustain ourselves singularly. We are homo sapiens because of agriculture and tribal living.

    OK, this is too much. I’m going to get a chicken coop and some tomato seeds. BRB.

    Oh, and don’t get me started on shrinkflation. Kerrygold butter is now 50g less for the same price. The feckin’ gobshites.

  • Clocks go back, clocks go forward

    We’re nearing the time of the clocks going back one hour in the UK and it is giving me my biannual opportunity to say, “why don’t we just put them back/forward1 by half an hour and LEAVE IT THAT WAY FOREVER?”

    Did you know that for a few years in the 1960s the UK did not do the back/forward clock change thing? I asked my Dad if he remembered this experiment with time and what he thought of it. He said he did remember, it made little difference, and the Scottish farmers moaned about it. I’m here now asking if we can try my thing. It’s 2025 and I am sick of coming up with these ideas (smash capitalism, create some sort of limit to the amount of money an individual can own, have a rent cap…) and no-one listening to me. It’s because they’re scared of my genius. I know. I know.

    Iceland don’t change their clocks. The country, not the shop. The shop has to change their clocks just like the rest of us. Now, if it’s good enough for Iceland (again, the country, not the shop) it’s good enough for me. That place has 6 months of darkness. They know things about Winter. Also, they seem to cope with insane landscapes and like no surnames as such. We have a lot to learn from Iceland (once more, for humour, the country…).

    Time isn’t even a real thing. It’s real in as much as time passes etc but what we call it, what we decide the time is, the date, it’s all just arbitrary. It’s all an illusion. Most everything is. I’m afraid I am feeling too delusional for this post but I also fear that I must state categorically: WE SHOULD JUST CHANGE IT BY HALF AN HOUR AND BE DONE WITH IT FOREVER.

    What’s the downside?

    Please. I want to know. What is the downside? I have spent 13 minutes Googling it and cannot find a proper response to why this is a good/bad idea thus: when I am supreme ruler of Earth (benevolent) I will try it and we will all see that I was right – this is a fine idea. Or, OR, that I was wrong and this nonsense of changing the clocks twice a year is the best way to do things. I just wanna know. My curiosity will be the death of me.

    Anyway, times a-ticking. Good luck out there. Read your oven’s manual.

    1. depends if I’m saying this in Spring or in Autumn ↩︎