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.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/26/terry-pratchett-jack-monroe-vimes-boots-poverty-index
Campaigner has used the idea drawn from Discworld novels to register the disproportionate effect price rises have on the lower paid
The Pratchett estate has authorised the use of the name, tweeting its own Pratchett quote in support of Monroe’s campaign. “Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness,” wrote the late Discworld author in Men at Arms.
Rhianna Pratchett said: “My father used his anger about inequality, classism, xenophobia and bigotry to help power the moral core of his work. One of his most famous lightning-rods for this was Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch - a cynical, but likable, man who attempts to better himself whilst railing against the injustices around him. Some of which he’s had a hand in perpetrating in the past.
“Vimes’s musing on how expensive it is to be poor via the cost of boots was a razor-sharp evaluation of socio-economic unfairness. And one that’s all too pertinent today, where our most vulnerable so often bear the brunt of austerity measures and are cast adrift from protection and empathy. Whilst we don’t have Vimes any more, we do have Jack and Dad would be proud to see his work used in such a way.”
Oh this is so cool
