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Here are all the things Brexit is about to make pricier

Here are all the things Brexit is about to make pricier

Here are all the things Brexit is about to make pricier
12 July 2016

Before the EU referendum, experts estimated that Brexit could leave the average Briton £580 worse off. But being a nation sick of experts, at least 52 per cent of us thought "Nope, we know best" and carried on our merry way. 

And now we're here. News of price hikes abound as the humble British pound continues to crumble, and thus the cost of importing stuff continues to rise. It will take a few months for you to really see these changes in the shops, but unless the pound gets bitten by a radioactive spider and gains super powers, rest assured these changes are coming. 

If you like little things like say holidays, laptops, and oh, we don't know, food, then oh boy, do we have some news for you. 

Fish and Chips

What a sick, ironic, slap-it-in-a-political-cartoon-and-make-future-history-students-study-it joke.

Because most fish in Britain is imported and because the pound is currently at a 31-year-low, Brexit has made it way more expensive for fishmongers and chip shop owners to buy sea critters. This means they'll have to charge customers more, which in turn means your grandchildren will never believe you when you say you used to be able to get fish and chips for under a fiver. 


Holidays

Despite what your 65-year-old da said a week after plunging Britain into turmoil with his Brexit vote, the pound has not and is not recovering. 

Before the referendum, a pound would've got you €1.30 worth of holiday money but - as of writing - you'll now get about €1.18. This means if you take £100 on your holidays to Europe, you'll end up with €12 less than you would've a few months ago. 


Laptops and computers

HP and Dell have both hiked their prices post-Brexit and Lenovo is currently considering doing the same. In real terms their tech looks to be going up by about 10 per cent, although it will take a few months until we see this in action. 

It's a good thing there's no such thing as planned obsolescence and we can just stock up on laptops now, right guys? Guys? 


Chocolate

Hi main character, meet the new dystopian novel that you're living in. 

Last week, the price of cocoa traded in London rose to its highest in almost 40 years (£2,495 a tonne, incidentally) which means, you guessed it, hiked prices for consumers. Et tu, chocolate? Et tu? 


Coffee

Lots of stuff in this little old world is bought and traded using the US dollar, and as the pound has dropped 15 per cent against the dollar since Brexit, all of this stuff is, in layman's terms, about to become hella pricey. 

Coffee beans are one such item, with Stephen Hurst, founder of Mercanta, a speciality coffee importer based in Kingston upon Thames, saying:  "If the pound doesn’t recover, prices will go up".


Cameras

Which is fine, because you'll no longer have any holidays or cups of coffee to take arty snaps of anyway.

Because many cameras are made in Japan and because yes, yes the pound is crap, the cost of importing the snappers will rise. Experts have estimated this means a 15 per cent rise in prices for consumers.


Just, you know, food

No big deal, really, is it? It's just what we need to survive. What you crying about, Joan? Back away from the Quavers, Paul. 

The cost of a typical basket of groceries has risen for the first time in seven months and (spoiler) this is only the beginning. No big deal, honest. It's cool.