The baskets of goods and services are weighted, though it will still be skewed to whatever the ‘average’ person buys. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/infl...articles/consumerpriceindicesabriefguide/2017 has a good introduction. In 2017 when that article was written, food was 7.1%, utilities 29.4%. In comparison AV and related was only 1.5% and portable sound and vision (which the MP3 player was presumably chosen to represent) only 0.021%.Indeed, and whilst I've been very fortunate (and anyone who tells you that it's all down to personal skill that they are where they are now doesn't understand that just by being born in, say, the UK means that they have already won life's lottery - although that's not to belittle those who have a truly horrid time here as there will still be far too many) not to have been in the situation where I've been worried about money to the extent where choices have to have been made between essential things (i.e. easy or heat) I have always questioned why I'm the "basket of goods" there's things like TV's and other tech which will almost always bring the cost of living down.
Now I know that I'm probably rare in that in the circa 15 years which I've been married we've only brought 3 TV's (and two of those are currently in use) with on of those only being brought because we had a lodger and it was the deal for them moving in. As such the cost of a TV isn't something which makes a big impact on our budget. Even understanding that we're towards one end of the spectrum, it's unlikely that those below the top 50% of household incomes are likely to buy a TV even every few years, yet it's there impacting the inflation value.
This discrepancy first came to my attention when an MP3 player was added to the basket of goods when it was still fairly new tech and not really something that many people I knew had and those who did where doing reasonably well (and at the time I wasn't exactly poor and was still living at home).
So the generally dropping price of technology is going to have less effect on the inflation number than rises in food prices. (Though have you seen the prices of graphic cards in the last few years?). Talking of TVs, apparently last year over 8 million were sold, a 20% increase on the previous year. There are around 28 million households, so a fair proportion do buy one so it’s worth going in the inflation figure. (Though it will still only be part of that 1.5% for AV)
One number is never going to cover all situations, but I believe the ONS are well respected for producing solid figures.