The New Normal

£50 For Cheeseburger & Chips

What happened to eating out for a fiver?

On a recent trip back to the UK, I paid £50 for a cheeseburger and chips plus two pints of beer.

‘£50?’ I questioned the barman. ‘Did you get my order correct? TWO cheeseburgers and TWO pints of ale.’ I held up two fingers to clarify the situation.

He looked at me like he was sitting on the toilet. Half grimacing, half grinning. ‘Sorry, it’s INFLATION.’

During my two-week trip back, if I’d noted the number of times I’d heard the word INFLATION, I could have written a novel entitled INFLATION IN A MILLION WORDS by The Guy Who Buys a Cheeseburger for Fifty Bucks!

Inflation

According to reports, inflation is going to reach 13% in the UK by the end of the year. And seeing as inflation is now at 9.5%, I can only imagine that on my next visit, I’ll be paying £60 for my burger and chips.

Was it that long ago, that I could wander down to the Red Lion and grab a burger and a pint for a fiver? Have I been away that long? Or has the £5 burger gone the way of Fish ‘N’ Chips? Once a staple of the British working class, is now a gourmet dinner for the rich.

Since Covid and Brexit everything has gone up in price. And now we have the war in Ukraine, the word INFLATION is as common as Fish ‘N’ Chips used to be before no one could afford them.

Next time I visit, INFLATION will have been replaced by HYPERINFLATION, and we’ll be living off spam and eggs.

Luckily, Britain is about to usher in a new Prime Minister, so everything will be OK…

Liz Truss

Most pundits expect Liz Truss to be the next PM. If you’ve never heard of Liz Truss, think of a half-attractive science teacher you once saw out on a night out wearing a crushed velvet dress and a hideous pearl necklace. That’s Liz Truss.

Or as commentators in the UK keep saying ‘Boris Johnson without the charm’. Although, I’ve never noticed this. All I’ve seen is a fat blond oaf who speaks in riddles like an overweight snake charmer drunk on his own vanity.

Either way, Liz Truss is almost certainly going to be as useless as her predecessor.

Luckily, I live in France, where inflation is lower and generally everything is cheaper. Which is crazy, as when I was a kid, France was always expensive.

‘Don’t go to France,’ my father always said. ‘It’ll cost you a fortune.’

I remember buying a can of Coke in Paris on a school trip in 1986 for 10 Francs. Ten Francs being about £1 in those days.

Bizarrely, you can still buy a can of Coke in France for a Euro (about 85p), so either I got ripped off in Montmartre 30 years ago — probable. Or inflation doesn’t affect products sold by multinationals.

A Stitch Up?

If the iconic symbols of Western Capitalism are allowed to become too expensive, people might come to the conclusion the system is shot, and before you know it, you’ve got a full scale revolution on your hands.

People ransacking shops and MacDonald’s for their Coke and Big Macs. Running around the streets, salivating as they force burger after burger down their turkey-wattled necks, all washed down with gallons of Coca-Cola.

We certainly wouldn’t be paying £50 for burger and chips? Or would we?

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my recent trip back home, it’s that people are quite happy to pay these prices, citing COVID, BREXIT, and THE WAR IN UKRAINE as the reasons.

But it didn’t need to be this way. The West knew Putin was going to invade Ukraine years ago. He’s being saying it on TV for years. Yet no one bothered to take him seriously. So no one planned for it.

Same with Brexit. That’s been on the cards since 2016, yet no one planned for the fallout.

Same with Covid.

Pandemics have been the stock of Hollywood directors and sci-fi writers for years. It wouldn’t have taken much for a government official to go to the movies or a library once in a while. Or even more outlandishly, listen to their own scientists who have been saying this for years.

Covid was always going to happen, and yet in the UK, doctors and nurses were left to make their own masks at home.

All three could have been planned for and their effects reduced. Instead, we did nothing and now everyone is paying £50 for burger and chips, and will be paying £5000 a year for gas and electricity by the winter.

Welcome to being ripped off. Welcome to The New Normal.

Thanks for reading this £50 piece. For cheaper material, check out.