
Bizarre story in the Guardian – apparently:
Stowe school chef tells court she saw kitchen porter poisoning soup
Drama lives on in those green and pleasant lands.
Incidentally, inflation seems to have hit my alma mater hard – full fees when I was there (and I was on a scholarship when I was there, I hasten to add) were closer to £12,000 a year. Even with compounded interest rates at 4% over the 13 years since I left the fees should be closer to £20,000 a year than £27,000. Accurate inflation calculation puts the figure at closer to £16,000. How come public school education is racing ahead of inflation?
I was talking to @geowgeow about why things cost random prices in shops, on seeing a surprisingly reassuring price-list in a sandwich shop in Victoria station. Everything there cost rounded whole numbers instead of apparently arbitrary digits – 12.64 is a pin code, not a price tag dammit!
Carrying the thought through (as you do) however led us to the fallacy of this – inflation is running at over 4%, so a 1 pound sausage roll would have to cost 1.04 next year and so on. So the silly prices return.
@geowgeow speculated that rounding for tidiness is probably worsening inflation – store managers that don’t like price tags that say 1.04 round up to 1.05 and BANG – up goes inflation by another percentage point.
Alan Sugar might be happy with the entrepreneurial instincts shown here, but Mervyn King? He’s probably unimpressed by the entire situation.
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