Inflation, and all that

 Friends in the UK have asked about energy prices. Have we noticed the same perturbations as in the UK? And what about inflation?

Here's a couple of factors to remember :

1) France invested heavily in nuclear power in the 1960s and 1970s, so we produce about 80% of our electricity from nuclear plants. Major cities have a nuclear power station not far away. This means we don't rely on gas to produce electricity. We also have hydro-electric schemes, wind farms and solar parks, of course. It is much more common in France to heat with electricity than in the UK.

2) France has massive gas storage facilities somewhere near Paris, and these were in good form before the winter hit.

3) Of course, our climate is a little more temperate than the UK anyway. We heat our homes for a shorter period.

For these reasons I don't know anyone here who has a smart-meter that tells them how much they are burning at a glance.

Now comes a caveat.

I am often targeted by advertising campaigns on the internet. They send me adverts for hair transplants (lol!), for combat computer games (double-lol) and, more recently, for a natty device that attaches to your electric meter and tells you how much you are consuming at a glance. They sell it as something that could cut your power-bills and also that could reduce France's consumption of energy. I'd be tempted but the thing costs 200€ and our electric bill is only about 40€ a month so it doesn't seem all that cost-effective.

Another caveat. Food prices fluctuate in France depending on the season, especially for what we buy. We try to avoid the need to read labels by only buying food that doesn't have a label, but that means buying seasonal vegetables. At the moment we are enjoying a glut of cheap butternut squashes!

Prices are also a bit weird compared to the UK. For example, I'll never understand why potatoes are usually so expensive, except that they are not a staple here. And that our potatoes are darling little red things, of course.

However we do also buy flour, oat flakes, fish, chicken, sugar, etc, and the other day I was struck by how much things seemed more expensive. Now that may be because of the particular shopping list for that day, but it was the first time in a while that I noted the effect of inflation.