Flash drives enter National Statistics' shopping basket

Inflation-monitoring process adds gadgets

17 March 2008 14:47 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

The Office for National Statistics has changed the contents of the "basket" of goods it looks at to calculate the Retail Price Index with a decidedly techie slant.

ONS collects about 120,000 prices every month for about 650 goods and services. The change in the prices of those items is used to compile the two main measures of inflation, the Consumer Prices Index and Retail Prices Index.

Once a year the basket of goods is tweaked to more accurately reflect UK consumer spending in order to offer a proper snapshot.

This year, top 40 CD singles have been dropped as popularity of music downloads has led to a decrease in spending.

Steering wheel locks have also been removed as spending has decreased as improved "onboard" security of newer cars render them unnecessary for a lot of car owners.

Among consumer technology items, 35mm camera film has been removed; 35mm cameras were dropped last year, and reflects the fact that spending on camera films has declined as digital cameras take over.

Camera film has been replaced by portable digital storage media such as memory cards and USB flash drives as spending on these products has grown "steadily" in recent years.

Another sign of the times - TV repairs are removed as television prices fall and technology and reliability improves - and, says the ONS, people increasingly replace broken televisions rather than fix them.

New non-tech items that have been added include fruit smoothies and muffins.

Full tags

Gadgets, Biz, Flash drives, Statistics, shopping