Flat-screen TVs and smartphone apps are now being used to calculate UK price index

IF YOU spent last night drinking sparkling wine with someone you met on an internet dating site, you’re just the sort of person Britain’s government statisticians have in mind.

Or perhaps you spent the evening eating a TV dinner in front of your 33-inch flat-screen, occasionally checking your smartphone for missed calls?

Either way, your changing spending habits have now been captured by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in its annual update of the basket of goods used to calculate the cost of living.

The ONS’s virtual shopping basket, which has been going since 1947, contains around 650 items representing virtually every aspect of spending – from food and drink to gas bills, rent, insurance, rail fares, green fees, foreign exchange commissions, marriage licenses and funeral costs. The original list in 1947, when Britain was still in the grip of food rationing, contained around 250 items, including corsets and cold cream, tinned prunes, herrings, mutton leg and gramophone records.

Each year, a couple of dozen items are removed, substituted or added to the basket to reflect the changing way in which we live. This year, underlining the way in which technology is transforming our lives, smartphones have made it onto the list for the first time, while the applications that run on them have replaced the ringtone downloads and mobile phone wallpaper that kept us all so amused a few years ago but seem hopelessly out of date in these days of the app.

Dating agency fees are also included for the first time, along with sparkling wine and three separate categories of flat-screen TVs – 14-22in, 23-32in and 33in-plus – reflecting the growing number of households with home cinema systems.

Dried fruit is in for the first time, as is hair conditioner and craft kits, while women’s fleeces are out, represented instead by the broader category of women’s jackets.

Cigarette vending machines are also dispensed with by the statisticians, ahead of the government ban on them later this year.

Oven-ready joints have replaced pork shoulder joints to reflect the longer-term trend for prepared food; other substitutions in the basket include medium density fibreboard (MDF) for hardboard, reflecting the growing market share captured by MDF.

Not all the moves are due to changing lifestyles. For example, hardback fiction books are included for the first time not because they are becoming more popular but because they were under-represented in the data collected on books.

The same is true of televisions, hence the three new categories included in the basket.

Rose bushes and vet fees for spaying a kitten have gone but only because their cost is reckoned to be included in existing gardening and pet-related categories, the ONS explained.

Teams employed by the ONS collect around 180,000 prices each month for the 650 goods and services in the cost-of-living basket and the results are used to compile Britain’s inflation rate.

The new basket will make its mark in the February consumer prices index, due to be published next week. With inflation running at 4 per cent – double the government’s target – and virtually certain to go higher, the market is awaiting the data with trepidation. The basket may have changed but, unfortunately, the story on the soaring cost of living will remain the same.

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A cautionary tale from Lancashire-based entertainment supplies group MBL, which has been forced to put itself up for sale after the cancellation of its contract with Morrison’s, the supermarkets chain.

Losing a contract is always a blow for a company, but it’s not usually fatal. In the case of MBL, which stands for Music Box Leisure, Morrison’s represented 78 per cent of its business and shares in the distribution company crashed 50 per cent to just 15.5p on the news. The future for MBL’s 300 or so employees looks bleak.

MBL has supplied Morrison’s with computer games, CDs and DVDs for 14 years, and directors were cock-a-hoop a couple of years ago when they announced that the supermarket chain had renewed its contract.

Morrison’s was set for “significant growth” in the entertainment category, MBL said, and the two companies would continue to work closely together.

Morrison’s in turn hailed MBL and its “high calibre” team for their continued commitment.

That was then, however, and the end result is what happens when a company fails to diversify and allows itself to become too dependent on a single customer. There is an irony in MBL’s plight – it was one of the main beneficiaries in 2008 when EUK, part of Woolworths, went into administration.

It will have its work cut out to avoid the same fate itself.

Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardiannewspaper in London