Smartphones and those handy apps that you download into smartphones are now helping the British calculate their official inflation rate. Governments keep close track of the prices of certain items, a kind of official grocery basket of things, as a way to monitor how quickly prices are going up. The British basket has about 650 goods and services from eggs to gasoline. Starting now the price of apps and the smart phones that love them are in the basket, a sign that even new numbers can follow the hipster crowd. Pork shoulder meat are out of the index, to be replaced by ready-for-the-oven roasts as British increasingly move toward prepared foods — possibly to free up more time for fiddling with apps.
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