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...course, the country has changed a great deal since 1957, and our spending habits with it. These days, ONS publishes the Family Spending results on an internationally-comparable basis – the Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose system, or ‘COICOP’ to its friends. Back then, though, we used a different system of spending categories, the so-called Family...

...course, wage stagnation does not affect everyone equally. Indeed, low wages are also impacted by existing problems of racism and sexism. Declining pay, perhaps not surprisingly, is especially dramatic for non-white and non-males. There are serious racial and gender pay gaps that persist and in some cases are widening. They are linked to structural issues – such as women...

...Furthermore, the fact that Halloween (or Easter, or Christmas) comes but once a year, means customers are prepared to pay more for products in fancy dress than they would for the basic item – thus creating more profit margin. Of course such potential rewards carry risk. Nobody wants jelly rodents in the warehouse in the first week of November. More on a Halloween theme...