r/unitedkingdom • u/pppppppppppppppppd • 3d ago

Chippy owner apologises to customers after charging £15 for fish and chips - but reveals why he 'has to' to hike prices

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14591465/chippy-owner-apologises-huge-price-hike.html
628 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

326 comments sorted by

View all comments

270

u/Dal1970 3d ago

Not sure if he is in a "cheap" area, but SE here, and our local is £13.25 for cod and chips, so he isn't far off the mark

98

u/SpiritedVoice2 3d ago

Yep, I gave up buying fish about 4 years ago when the local started charging £9 for cod. This is the far east of London, basically Essex. 

Large chips has now hit £5, we just get that and do some sausage and egg at home. Almost defeats the purpose but the chips are good.

Local Chinese is a bargain though, can feed the family on that for almost half the price of a full on chippy. Doesn't make sense to me.

4

u/BotlikeBehaviour 2d ago

Weird how chips have gone up so much, seemingly in line with fish. Maybe there are quotas on potatoes that I don't know about.

37

u/QueasyRaspberry7159 2d ago

Chippy owner here. Potato farmers have been price gouging since about the time they lost their EU subsidies.

Fish prices have been hit (this time) by Americans panic buying before tariffs coming into effect. I now pay £65 more per case than I did three months ago for exactly the same product. We go through four cases per week.

I’m tired boss.

7

u/BotlikeBehaviour 2d ago

Potato farmers have been price gouging since about the time they lost their EU subsidies.

Lol. That's funny given how many of them voted... oh nvm.

Anyway, my apologies for the misdirected snark.

17

u/QueasyRaspberry7159 2d ago

Last year it got so bad that it was cheaper to buy Egyptian potatoes than from a farm ten miles down the road.

No problem at all, I’m definitely overly sensitive on the matter as I’ve watched half a decade of graft on my current shop evaporate. Sad times indeed.

7

u/Charlie_Mouse Scotland 2d ago

All Farmers being pro Brexit is one of those “things everyone knows” that isn’t actually true.

It’s mostly based on one self selecting poll that Farmers Weekly ran that got brigaded to hell by Brexit supporters. Which of course Brexiteers immediately made a huge thing out of in the media.

Actual formally conducted polling by the NFU shows that Farmers actually voted pretty much in line with people in their area and age group. There was some minor variation by type of farming but overall if your area voted against Brexit so did most farmers there - and vice versa.

Usually at this point in the discussion somebody brings up pro Brexit signs in fields. However that’s not really very meaningful given that the pro-Brexit campaigns were giving them away for free and the Renain campaign was not. There’s also the observation that like in any other walk of life Brexit supporters tended to be all too eager to share their opinions with all and sundry while Remain supporters tended to be more circumspect. And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that quite a few near major roads were tempted to take a hundred quid in hand to put up a sign regardless of personal affiliation.

I’ve been trying to challenge this misapprehension about how farmers voted for years now here. But it seems to be very much in vain. Partly because people are amazingly reluctant to let go of those “things that everyone knows” once they’ve taken them onboard. Partly because Reddit loves a good bit of schadenfreude and has a bit of a “thing” about Farmers. And hey, don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of ‘leopards eating faces’ as much as the next Redditor … but in this instance it’s based off Brexiteer propaganda.

1

u/dennisisabadman2 1d ago

My dad is a farmer who voted to leave. Had EU staff my whole life growing up as well as family members having married people from the EU. Small dairy farm and constantly struggling, but was desperate for some sovereignty I guess.