Byrne Robotics: Cost of living

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Topic: Cost of living

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Craig Earl
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Joined: 13 July 2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1654

Posted: 23 January 2026 at 7:07am \| IP Logged \| 1	post reply

I live down in Kent in the UK (South East of the country) and my wife and I both work full time. We try to go away once or twice a year, but we don't do an awful lot of socialising (maybe I'll meet with friends every five or six weeks). We are comfortable but sensible with our money, and live within our means. For us, it's all about saving for a retirement that is (hopefully) not too far away.

What you get for your money these days is so much less than it used to be ('shrinkflation' is alive and well in the UK).

I happened to catch an episode of 80's UK TV series MInder recently, where the main character visited a newsagents with a confectionery stall. Those choc bars looked at least one and a half times bigger than today's options!

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Greg McPhee
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Joined: 25 August 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 5181

Posted: 23 January 2026 at 7:33am \| IP Logged \| 2	post reply

Craig, I every now and again succumb to having a Yorkie bar.

I have noticed they have gotten smaller, but more expensive over the past few years.

And don’t get me started on the size or number of Jaffa Cakes in a pack now.

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Bill Collins
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Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11511

Posted: 23 January 2026 at 7:39am \| IP Logged \| 3	post reply

Shrinkflation is definitely on the rise. I remember when
Curly Wurly bars were a good 10" long, and it isn't an
optical illusion cos i now have adult hands! Terry Scott
a U.K. comedy actor used to adverise them on tv an adult
dressed as a schoolboy and they were definitely that big
in his hands!I remember the cardboard inside the
packaging of certain chocolate bars, Bounty springs to
mind. But in the last 20 years the manufacturers have
sneakily pumped up the ends of the packaging of chocolate
bars, so it seems you're getting more. Also i have seen
on a fair few 70's nostalgia sites comparisons with the
size of 70's and modern chocolate wrappers.I don't mind
price rises in restaurants too much in the U.K. as the
minimum wage keeps rising and we don't have the tipping
system the U.S. has.Don't forget we had shrinkflation in
comics, reduced page counts, but the price stayed the
same, then went up. It's why i stopped buying them as
they just weren't value for money anymore.As for
holidays, we holiday in the U.K. nowadays for various
reasons and i know it would be cheaper to holiday
abroad.My previous job i worked at for 25 years and
initially it was fine, then we were sold to a quite well
known U.S. company and were doing fantastically well,
then one of the head honchos in the U.S. was found to be
embezzling money to an offshore account in the Caribbean.
To cut a long story short the company was banned from
trading on the U.K. stock exchange and we were sold again
to try and cover the money lost. The new owner a member
of the House of Lords no less was already known to be a
shady character, stealing the pensions of one company he
owned, falsely claiming Ł30,000 of expenses for
"commuting" to Parliament, which he claimed was a
misunderstanding due to the language barrier despite him
living in the U.K. since the early 60's and was allowed
to pay back with no futher consequences, and a few years
later the group as a whole was put into administraion and
we all lost our jobs, the shady Lord's billions safely
ring-fenced. So i know big business can be very shady and
poorly run.
Also i rarely go to gigs nowadays as i refuse to pay
100's of pounds for a ticket, i remember when it was £5
for an arena gig, and i just feel it's a rip off
nowadays.

Edited by Bill Collins on 23 January 2026 at 7:41am

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Edward Aycock
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Joined: 13 July 2024
Location: United States
Posts: 112

Posted: 23 January 2026 at 12:24pm \| IP Logged \| 4	post reply

As it's Easter season in a couple months, look at how small the Cadbury Creme Egg has become.

Edited by Edward Aycock on 23 January 2026 at 1:32pm

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Trevor Smith
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Joined: 21 September 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 3646

Posted: 23 January 2026 at 12:36pm \| IP Logged \| 5	post reply

I'm convinced that that's the reason for the move to
packaging them in a plastic shell, as opposed to the old
foil wrap - harder to notice how small they've become.

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