How is the Retail Price Index (and, therefore inflation?) REALLY worked out? Is it done on weight/capacity/number of items per unit......or just "what was offered last week and went up this week"? For instance, here are a few examples: Say some items i buy on a regular basis are (say) a litre bottle of Cola, a packet of 10 doughnuts and a double pack of kitchen towels Take the Cola as 1st example.....say this costs One Pound.They reduce the volume to (say
90 millilitres, and reduce the price by, say 5p to 95 pence Now, take the packet of 10 doughnuts. They either reduce the ammount to 9 per packet, or keep the same ammount per packet, but reduce the size of each doughnut, and sell the packet at the same price The kitchen towels were 60 sheets per roll, but they are subject to a "50% more" offer for a short time, then, when the offer ends the actual rolls now contain only 44 sheets per roll. I guess i am not explaining this too well, but what i *think i mean is does it get based on "pence per 100 mls" or pence per 10 sheets, etc? I am not asking if its legal for stores to do this or not, just whether those few examples would have an effect (and to what degree) on the RPI
Tamale-loco