The Vimes Boots Index

When the Office of National Statistics announced that the Consumer Price Index (based on the costs of a raft of items, from food, to petrol, to furniture) showed inflation was up to 5.4%, the highest level in 30 years, food/poverty activist Jack Monroe, who became a national figure when documenting in her blog the travails of feeding herself and her toddler on a food budget of £10/week (all she had left on benefits after other bills), took the ONS to task by pointing out that the CPI bore no relation to the lived reality of people trying to survive on supermarket budget ranges, who had seen prices double or more over the past couple of years.

A few days on and not only has the ONS agreed that the CPI isn't entirely fit for purpose and they'll retool it to cover a range of budgets, but Monroe and a bunch of others have announced they are launching an inflation index of their own, and delightfully they've been given the Pratchett family's permission to call it the Vimes Boots Index, after Sam Vimes' ruminations in Men at Arms that only the rich can afford to live on a low income (the logic going that Sam has to buy boots at $10 that last a couple of seasons, and a couple more if patched with cardboard, while a rich man can afford to pay $50 and get a pair that last a decade, in which time Sam will have spent over $100)

I can definitely see Pterry approving of putting Vimes' name to this.

Cost-of-living crisis: Jack Monroe hails ONS update of inflation calculations

Terry Pratchett estate backs Jack Monroe’s idea for ‘Vimes Boots’ poverty index