The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. [...] The thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms
The UK based food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe recently tweeted a thread highlighting how official inflation figures didn’t account for the astronomical price rises in the cheapest products.
Off the back of that, they had the idea to do an index of their own based on their own experiences of the cheapest products that many people rely on having increases way above inflation or being removed altogether.
This isn’t just a feeling, Jack literally kept the receipts. They have over 10 years of shopping receipts kept for their food blog.
The twitter thread took off and has now had over 22 million views.
The idea of a separate UK index of everyday products people on lower incomes rley on, that reflects the actual affect of price changes on ordinary people’s finances, has completely taken off and is now being covered in all the major news outlets. It is also being supported by a whole range of organisations, camapaigners, retail industry professionals, data analysts and others.
Jack has put out a call for people in the UK to send their old shopping receipts to add to the exissting data for tracking historic price changes.
Today Jack tweeted that they had permission from the Pratchett estate for the use of the preferred name for the new project:
It will be called the Vimes Boot Index.
