arkon

On the news tonight they had a slot about inflation in Australia and how it has gone up, apparently the official reason for the rise is the price of petrol and bananas! Petrol I can understand but a 1st world country at the mercy of the price of a kilo of bananas! No other reasons given. So next time your moaning about the interest rate rise and the cost of your mortgages you know to blame the banana.

Ozzidoc

Hmmmm is it the banana of the demand for the banana? Are bananas included in the governments "basket of goods" upon which inflation is measured?

PeteY

Just goes to show what happens when 5 million Australian families all simultaneously stop spending $10 a week on the nations favorite fruit.

arkon

If it is in the 'basket of goods' for the RPI test then it must be mostly full of bananas. I suppose we should be grateful that the cucumber isn’t included in the basket because according to subway they are on the nearly extinct list too.

GinaUK

Yaaaawn.

Hutch

Yea? Now I've heard it all twice.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=386916

arkon

Cool, must be an important topic then, clearly great minds think alike.

Amazulu

I had a chucke about the bananas too. The thing that pissed me off is the petrol price. 2 weeks ago the press was speculating that oil was going to smash through $80/bbl & petrol would be $1.50/l due to the conflict in Lebanon. Well, oil has not gone through $80, it's about $73 & relatively stable but petrol is heading for $1.50. WTF. Apparently it's due to the 'price cycle' & BP are the ones who kick it off. What a load of bollox. I can safely say that people in the UK would not put up with this, remember the fuel blockades of a few years ago? That would never happen here.

fraser

When we arrived here 11 months ago petrol was around $1.10 mark and people were up in arms about it. Yet as it now looks like hitting $1.50 mark total apathy about it

Amazulu

That's it. There is no need for it to be heading for $1.50. No one knows what is going to happen in world events. It's just pure speculation & people put up with it. There was some joker on TV the other day saying it's 'going to hit $2 next year, which is scary'. Based on what? 'Experts' were saying that oil prices were going to scream up because of mid east conflict. Well, it hasn't. It might do in the future but right now hasn't. So these rises are unjustified.

jad n rich

Also, assuming every country in the world has had petrol increases, I do wonder why its only australia who has to keep shoving their interest rates up , I think only NZ were higher than us (western world vash, not outer botoswongolia or whatever you can drag up ) Besides raising interest rates will get passed on like petrol costs so hardly going to decrease inflation.

I think the bananas bit comes in with the public being treated as apes when it comes to what they will believe.

jad n rich

The brainwashings started on interest rates too, yesterdays proposed hike is now that and further 3

Hutch

That's total and utter, bollocks. The fuel blockade achieved absolutely nothing, petrol has continued to rise and is now getting on for £1.10 a litre. They tried another petrol protest last year and there was total apathy, because ultimately the British public realised that the only people who were inconvenienced were themselves, not the oil companies with their vast cash war chests. Everybody, in every country, is being shafted by the oil companies and the governments that earn so much tax revenue from those petro-dollars.

Hutch

That's one way of putting it, I suppose.

Amazulu

I don't know where you get £1.10 from, check: www.petrolprices.com

Lowest price where I used to live is 94.9p, a lot less than £1.10.